BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — Students planning to take up the expensive nursing course in college were advised to take up another course because of the sudden decline in demand for Filipino nurses in both the local and international scenes, Health Secretary Enrique T. Ona said here during the continuing dialogue with provincial health officers of provinces north of Manila.

Instead of contributing to the over 200,000 jobless nurses nationwide, Secretary Ona wants parents and students to try courses related to mathematics, engineering and science and technology which command high compensations in both the local and international scenes as evidenced by the increasing professionals engaging in such courses.

The top health official admitted that gone are the days when the nursing is the most in demand job overseas following the downtrend in the nursing profession which was compounded by the reported strike in various Middle East countries that employ a large number of Filipino nurses.

Although the downtrend in the nursing profession could change in the future, there is need for students to venture on other courses such as medical technology and engineering, said Ona

Filipinos should now start thinking out of the box and explore other lucrative careers which complement current advances in technology, he said.

He cited medical technology which now focuses on molecular biology because of the advances on stem cell research and development.

Ona said engineering, which has various fields, could also be explored such as greening programs, weather forecasting, among others.

He said the infrastructure boom should also be a promising field for civil engineers.

Earlier, government embarked on employing nurses as midwives to address the growing number of unemployed nurses but this was just a very temporary measure.

As a remedial measure, the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), had to employ stricter measures in licensing, both on professionals and on schools offering nursing courses, so that the cream of the crop will be the ones to be provided the appropriate license in order to pursue the profession.

During the conduct of career guidance to be done by the different higher education institutions, Ona stressed high school graduates must be appropriately informed that there are other courses which they could take that will result to much better compensation in either the local and international scenes, especially with the stiff competition among multinational companies in the hiring of promising graduates from various public and private high schools nationwide.

Ona also noted the hiring of nurses in western countries have also declined since the onslaught of the global financial crisis three years ago and that the world economy has yet to go back to normal and see the hiring of more professionals.

Meanwhile, the ranks of out-of-school youths (OSUs) in the vegetable producing province of Benguet has considerably declined over the past several years following the implementation of the Alternative Learning System (ALS) that saw 556 individuals graduate from high school in the 13 towns and 21 persons obtaining their elementary diplomas.