MANILA — The government should make steps to immediately "slow down" the recruitment to other countries of Filipino healthcare workers, a healthcare expert urged on Wednesday.

Dr. Marilyn Lorenzo, a professor at UP Manila, said foreign recruiters go directly to hospitals and schools, during a Senate hearing tackling the status of the Human Resources for Health (HRH) in the Philippines.

"Most of the recruiters - if not all of the recruiters - of nurses and student nurses, actually come into the country unimpeded. They go straight to hospitals, go straight even to schools without any checks," she said.

"What worries us is the recruitment becomes now unethical. They recruit whole teams of cardiovascular surgery teams. And so when they recruit this to one hospital abroad, they don't have anymore downtime. They don't need to be trained because they work well together. In the meantime, it's our healthcare capability here that's hampered," she added.

Lorenzo said there is a "critical shortage" of healthcare workers (HCWs) in the country, and the government must act on this now.

Sen. Pia Cayetano, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Innovation and Futures Thinking, dubbed the "wholesale recruitment" a "modern-day colonization".

"I mean, honestly, I’d use the term, it’s 'modern-day colonization.' They just come in. And in as much as, I will repeat, I respect the right of every Filipino - nurse ka man, abogado ka man, ano ka pa man din - to choose their own future, I am not comfortable and I cannot not tolerate that they come in and wholesale recruit this whole group and then paralyze a sector of our healthcare that is providing these services to our people, whether it’s private or public," she said.

Cayetano challenged concerned government agencies to pose solutions to the recruitment of Filipino HCWs.

"This is not new. Other countries have been more proactive in protecting their healthcare system. They ensure that if you are going to invite our healthcare workers, then you go through us," she said.

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Asec. Levinson Alcantara of the Department of Migrant Workers said there is an initiative to support higher education in terms of bilateral partners.

"For example, specific communities that are host to students that are enrolled in the healthcare discipline, bubuhusan natin ng scholarships... Iyon pong country of destination na bilateral partner natin will have to pitch in, will have to contribute to the education of our future supply," he explained.

Alcantara also suggested "bilateral co-management" of healthcare workers supply through "ethical recruitment principles" on labor agreements.

For its part, CHED vowed to continue the upskilling and reskilling of future nurses.

DFA Usec. Eduardo Jose De Vega proposed a "whole of government" approach to solve the problem.

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Making healthcare workers stay

Lorenzo said the government should also focus on the retention of nurses, who are "not only about the money".

"The first one is about work environments, whether their jobs provide decent work and if they have prospects of career development and progression. The second, 'Is the work environment giving them requisite materials, support, and technology that they need?' And only third comes pay, salaries, and benefits," she explained.

Dr. Antonio Dans, a professor at the UP College of Medicine, said the Philippines also does not meet the WHO ratio of healthcare workers to patients.

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"We understand that if it's one worker per 1,000, we can always ask ourselves, 'Kaya ba namin ito?' To take care of 1000 people in a year. So the (WHO) recommendation was four healthcare workers/professionals. One to two doctors to two to three nurses, and one midwife," he said.

"We're only 2.5 healthcare workers per Filipino, and that adds up to a deficit of 116,000 doctors, 125,000 nurses. We do have adequate midwives," he added.

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Dans echoed support for healthcare workers - including protection of the Magna Carta benefits for public healthcare workers, expansion of Magna Carta to private healthcare workers, and broadened services through professionalizing barangay health workers.