TACLOBAN CITY — Students from the mining-affected island of Homonhon will soon have a chance to pursue medical careers through a new scholarship program with the University of the Philippines.

This comes as UP Manila Chancellor Dr. Michael Tee signed an agreement with House Minority Leader and 4Ps Party-list Representative Marcelino Libanan and Eastern Samar Representative Christopher Sheen Gonzales to create a special class for 25 students.

They said that the program aims to train them as midwives, nurses and doctors who will serve their home community.

The students will attend classes at UP Manila’s School of Health Sciences in Palo, Leyte, which pioneered a “stepladder curriculum” in 1976. This model allows students to train as midwives, then nurses and eventually doctors within a single educational track.

Students are selected based on community need and their desire to perform community work, with rural communities nominating who will represent them.

Libanan and Gonzales, the latter of whom is the former mayor of Guiuan where Homonhon Island is located, said the partnership will help build a sustainable, community-rooted health workforce for the island.