Dying Healthcare in the Philippines: Another Doctor’s Perspective

Although I don’t think I’m a blogger well-established enough to feature the writings of another blogger, still I’d like to take this opportunity to share with your another doctor’s perspective on the status of the health care system in the Philippines. This just goes to say that not few doctors (and not only me) see the terrible dilemma our country is facing regarding our health care system and that doctors are raising their voices to be able to let the whole country know that many changes should be done soon, if not, now.

Here’s Dr. Carl Dwight Demetria’s take on the issue (as posted in another forum):

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Health care in the Philippines is dying.

And for me, it is a slow, painful death. Like a hemorrhaging patient with advanced TB, who neglected to take the needed but annoyingly long anti-Koch’s medications.

We could run the merry-go-round of declaring who is the more righteous: the pragmatist who believes that “the best provider is the one who leaves”, or the apologist/optimist who generalizes medical students as rich, and can tolerate a few more years of drought before they hit the big time in local medical practice.

But the prospects for our patient named Philippine health care is necessarily colored by our personal experiences as doctors. Even as we slowly espouse evidence-based medicine in our human patients, in social problems such as this one we inevitably fall on our own emotion-colored glasses to see the picture.

So to add to this discussion I return to what I have experienced in my short stint as a doctor.

Even while studying in the State University, there has always been a distinction between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. This delineation can be noticed once somebody initiates a discussion about future plans. The ‘haves’, either by virtue of a sizeable war chest, an inheritable clinic practice, or extensive networking, are almost always cocksure about their plans for the future: residency in PGH, or taking the USMLE.

The ‘have-nots’, who have struggled silently to get through medical school, are not as sure as to their future plans. The lack of a medical Economics class does not help matters.

As they approach the clinics, they all see first hand the innards of a government hospital, and its one oft-repeated saving grace: the richness of clinical material called patients. Otherwise, the bureaucracy cripples everything from supplies to having enough nurses to the imposed, but subtle, monstrosity that is termed ‘hierarchy’. Only a few would dare express delight at this set-up, declaring their fealty to the hospital and the corresponding willingness to sacrifice ‘few’ years to train there. Most would be silently waiting for the day that they could break free from the hospital’s grip.

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