MANILA — The Philippines needs to offer better benefits and salaries to fill a shortage of nearly 200,000 health workers, the Department of Health said.

DOH data earlier showed the country was short of some 106,000 nurses.

However, the workforce gap spans across other healthcare professionals such as doctors, physical therapists and dentists, with the total shortage at around 194,000, the agency said.

The breakdown is as follows, it said.

• Nurse - 106,541
• Physicians - 67,345
• Pharmacist - 6,651
• Xray Radiologic Technician - 5,502
• Medical Technologists - 4,416
• Nutrionist-Dietician - 1,680
• Occupational Therapists - 884
• Midwives - 785
• Physical Therapists - 223
• Dentist – 87

DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said the shortage would not be solved solely by implementing a deployment cap.

Policies on benefits and salaries will have a greater impact on upsizing the country’s health workforce, she said.

“We’re proposing to [amend] the magna carta bill to cover both private and public workers. The second one will be a bill on the standardization of salaries. So ibig sabihin kung ano ang natatangap ngayon ng government workers public would also be received by the private workers,” Vergeire said.

(This means that the workers in the private sector will get the same salary as those in government service.)

• Amendments to Magna Carta of Public Health Workers sought

The health official said there were reports of internal migration of healthcare workers from the private to the public sector due to notable discrepancies in salaries.

The DOH is set to meet with the Department of Migrant Workers next week to discuss possible mutual agreements with countries that employ Filipino healthcare workers.

“Makiki-ride on tayo to explore the possibility na yes we will be sending out our healthcare workers but in turn baka naman puwedeng merong scholarships, exchange programs para kahit papano puwedeng na magbe-benefit ang healthcare workers natin unang-una so that their career path would be maayos,” Vergeire said in a press briefing Thursday.

(We will explore the possibility of yes, we will be sending out our healthcare workers but in turn, perhaps there could be scholarships, exchange programs so that they would benefit in terms of their career path.)

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The DOH said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is aware of the different issues facing health workers and has ordered the formulation of reforms.

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