IN THIS time of pandemic, a conscious effort to invest in our healthcare workforce who provide for the services, especially at the primary level, is crucial for an effective, efficient, and equitable health service delivery.
In fact, achieving “universal health care” takes a workforce. Healthcare workers are the heart and soul of our health system. What will happen if all our doctors and nurses go abroad for better paying jobs? Who will take care of our health?
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the Philippines was already having a workforce crisis. In 2014, using available government data, the Coalition for Primary Care estimated that the country’s health workforce to population ratio stood at 2.3:10,000, which was 10 times less than the 23:10,000 doctors, nurses, midwives to population ratio established by the World Health Organization needed to deliver only essential maternal and child health services.
To what will the inadequacy of frontline health workers results to? Inequity.
Data from Philippine Statistics Authority show that six out of 10 Filipinos who die, die without ever seeing a health professional. This is especially true in geographically isolated and disadvantage areas.
In addition, there are still 51 doctorless municipalities in Regions 8 (Eastern Visayas), 9 (Zamboanga Peninsula), 10 (Northern Mindanao), 11 (Davao Region), Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), and Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), according to the Coalition for Primary Care.
The longstanding issue on the absorptive capacity and budget utilization of the Department of Health is also a health workforce issue. Public health demands technical competency and adequate number of workforce at the service delivery, policy-setting, and program management levels. There is a need to constantly strengthen the health sector’s organizational capacity and front-line workforce so that it can deliver the much-needed services.
A country can never progress with a frail citizenry. To ensure that they are cared for, we should take good care of our healthcare workers, too. And this means better pay and benefits for our doctors, nurses, medical technologists, dentists, etc.
