TACLOBAN CITY — House Minority Leader and 4Ps Partylist Representative Marcelino Libanan filed a bill to establish a medical school in his home province Eastern Samar to address the problem of shortage of medical doctors and improve the public healthcare delivery.

This comes as he also urged state colleges and universities to launch their own medical schools so that they can produce more doctors that are badly needed to build up the public healthcare system.

“Congress must enable highly advanced SUCs, particularly those in the provinces, to put up their own medical schools where tuition fees are at least partly paid for by the state,” Libanan said in a statement on Sunday.

He added that out of 116 SUCs in the country, only six have a college of medicine where cost of medical education is within the reach of more families.

“Very few Filipino families can afford to send their children to private medical schools that are very expensive. This is one of the reasons why we are not producing enough doctors,” Libanan said.

“We must improve access to state-subsidized medical schooling if we want to produce a greater number of Doctor of Medicine graduates in the years ahead,” he added.

Libanan filed House Bill 9872 seeking to establish the Eastern Samar State University College of Medicine in Borongan City. ESSU is the second-largest SUC in Eastern Visayas by student population.