Herbosa: We must find ways to retain Filipino health workers

Recognizing the exodus of healthcare professionals in the country, the Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday pressed the need to "find ways to retain" its health workers.

In a chance interview with reporters on the sidelines of the Conference on Philippine-Pacific Partnership on Sustainable Health Workforce for Health Security in Makati, DOH Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said there should be programs that help Filipino healthcare professionals choose to stay in their own country.

"Kailangan i-train natin ang (We need to train our) health workers natin to be good to be exported, but we must also find ways to retain them and make them stay," Herbosa told reporters.

Earlier, Herbosa said that a total of 190,000 healthcare workers are needed to fill the gaps in the Philippines' healthcare system.

To address this, the Health secretary said the hiring of medical practitioners will continue, and scholarship programs for those wanting a career in the medical field will also be provided.

However, Herbosa said that having "many medical schools locally" is one of the country's advantages.

"We have over 80 medical schools in the Philippines, 22 are state universities and colleges... So there are things we can share," he added.

"We licensed 10,000 nurses, but we have 13,000 nurses leaving every year. So that's not sustainable. We have to find ways," he lamented.

In his speech, Herbosa underscored that "there is no more critical topic for the region than addressing the health workforce crisis in the Western Pacific."

He also noted that the Philippines' problems are the same as those of the Pacific Islands in the healthcare sector.

"As Pacific neighbors, we encounter similar challenges in health—the triple burden of communicable disease, non-communicable disease, and health impacts from climate change on health systems and, yes, the critical shortage of health workers, which we keenly felt during the recent Covid-19 pandemic, where we had many Filipino health worker deaths here and in other countries," Herbosa said.

The DOH chief batted for strong health systems and an adequate health workforce, calling for fellow health officials from the region "to act together."

"Like a canoe that relies on skilled hands and collective effort to sail through both calm seas and storms, so too must our health systems be guided by the steady hands of our health workforce," he continued.

"The importance of human resources for health is something that we in the Philippines have come to recognize not only from a theoretical standpoint but also as the result of our decades of actual experience managing health worker migration and balancing it with the need to ensure the presence of a robust domestic health workforce," he added.

To address roadblocks in the country's healthcare system, Herbosa said the DOH has intensified its efforts to strengthen the Philippines' health workforce by prioritizing workforce development, supporting domestic policy reforms, and engaging in bilateral agreements to confront migration-related challenges.

"We have also taken on a proactive role in advocating for sustainable and equitable health workforce solutions at the global stage," he continued.

"Through a diplomatic initiative, which we launched earlier this year in a Side Event at the World Health Assembly, we are advancing and sharing our belief that a well-supported, fairly distributed, and resilient health workforce is essential for achieving universal healthcare and safeguarding health security—not just for our nation but for the entire region and the world," he added.

While he recognized that dealing with health workforce issues "will not come from one-size-fits-all approaches," Herbosa vowed to forge mutual reliance and collaboration with Pacific Island neighbors through sharing best practices, exploring innovative and collaborative strategies to strengthen health workforce capacity, exchanging knowledge and technical expertise on human capital development and systems strengthening, and promoting decent work for health workers across countries.

"The Philippines stands ready to work with our Pacific Island neighbors, the World Health Organization, and key stakeholders to realize the vision of a resilient, equitable, and sustainable health workforce," Herbosa said.

"Let us seize this opportunity to strengthen our collective resolve and work together to ensure a sustainable and empowered health workforce that can respond to the challenges ahead."