Davao City – The Philippine National Health Research System (PNHRS) has urged all health stakeholders to support the move to propose a bill seeking the increase in funding for research and development in the country.

In an interview with Dr. Juan Pablo Nanagas, chairman of the Committee on Structure Organization Monitoring Evaluation of the PNHRS, during the recent opening of the 3rd PNHRS week celebration here, he disclosed that the PNHRS bill, which is yet to be proposed in Congress, will seek an allotment from concerned government agencies for health research.

“In the bill, a certain percent of an agency’s funding will be dedicated to health research. This will help improve and sustain our health research efforts,” he said.

Nanagas said that only a small percentage of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is alloted to research and development in the country.

“While we get approximately 0.012 percent, other countries get 2 percent budget from their GDP, which is the benchmark funding for research and development,” Nanagas emphasized.

He also said that another concern in the country’s research and development is the lack of researchers. “The ideal ratio of researchers to population is 200 per one million population. But we are way far from achieving that with our current number of researchers which is estimated at 85 per a million population,” Nanagas said.

He also added that brain drain also contributed to the problem. “With brain drain, the service delivery
aspect of health research is being affected. That’s why we are making efforts to strengthen our community of researchers by giving them the environment where they can do their research unhampered,” Nanagas said, adding that decentralization of research efforts are being done to focus more on regional health research in the country.

“Decentralization of research efforts can give a free hand on researchers in the region since they know more their regional health needs,” Nanagas said.

Though Dr. Antonio Ligsay, chief of the research management and development of the Philippine Center for Health Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology, said that efforts have already been made to address the problems in the country’s health research.