At least 65 of these doctors are serving in the "Doctors to the Barrios" program, the Department of Health reported to the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives.
Eighty-eight more, who were among the 279 medical practitioners who volunteered for the program, have decided to stay permanently in their place of assignment, with many of them raising families in their adopted hometowns.
Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya, appropriations panel chairman, said the program needs more volunteers as 40 towns are without doctors at present. All are "economically-depressed, hard-to-reach " 5th and 6th class towns, some of which are "strife-torn," the DoH report said.
"Actually , the DoH received requests from 115 towns for doctors. But about 75 of these were ‘augmentation cases’ meaning, there is already a government doctor, but the doctor-to-physician ratio is more than 1:20,000 so they’re requesting DoH to send them at least one," Andaya explained
A doctor who joins the program gets a monthly net pay of less than P25,000 as a Salary Grade 24 medical officer in the government’s pay scale , a fraction of what foreign hospitals are offering Filipino physicians .
The salary is, however, augmented by allowances and other privileges granted by a handful of private corporations .
Part of the package is a scholarship grant for a Masters in Community Health Management from the Ateneo de Manila University , with funding support from drug company Pfizer .
The DoH has also thrown in free plane tickets to volunteers who have to go to Manila for conference , schooling and vacation.
Andaya said the P11 billion DoH budget for 2006 includes funding for the recruitment of physicians to both national and local hospitals and rural health units , outside the Doctors to the Barrios program .
The committee is also studying the request of the DoH to add P1.3 billion to the P712 already in the bill for benefits granted to public health personnel under their Magna Carta , he added.
Public health personnel will also be getting an average eight percent salary increase next year for which P13.1 billion had been earmarked in the 2006 budget bill.
A UP study revealed that 3,500 medical doctors have left the country as nurses since 2000. In 2004 and 2005, 2,347 medical doctors took the nursing board exams, the report added.
