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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has approved an end to the nation’s health workers’ deployment ban, his labor minister said on Saturday, paving the way for thousands of nurses to accept jobs abroad.
“The president has already approved lifting the temporary suspension of the deployment of nurses and other medical workers,” Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello told Reuters.
Bello said the spread of the new coronavirus was slowing down in the country and conditions were improving, so the government could afford to let its healthcare workers go.
The Philippines has the second highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Southeast Asia, but the number of daily cases and death rates have dropped.
To ensure the Philippines has enough medical professionals to continue fighting the pandemic at home, only 5,000 health workers will be allowed to leave each year, Bello said.
“We’re starting with just a 5,000 cap, so we won’t run out of (medical workers), but this may eventually increase,” Bello said.
Last year, nearly 17,000 nurses signed overseas employment contracts, data from the Higher Education Commission and the Overseas Employment Administration of the Philippines shows.
In April, the government banned nurses, doctors and other medical workers from leaving, saying they were needed to fight the coronavirus crisis at home.
Thousands of health workers, who call themselves “prison nurses,” had asked the government to allow them to accept jobs abroad, Reuters reported in September. Nurses say they feel underpaid, underestimated and unprotected in the Philippines.
While the lifting of the travel ban was a “welcome development,” Maristela Abenojar, president of Filipino Nurses United, challenged the government to make good on its commitment to give its nurses better pay and benefits if it wants them to stay.
Filipino healthcare workers are on the front lines of the pandemic in hospitals in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, as well as in their homes.
New cases of coronavirus in the Philippines have remained below 2,000 since November 10, while deaths, which totaled 8,025 as of November 20, are only equivalent to 1.93% of the country’s 415,067 cases.
Hospital bed occupancy has also dropped from critical levels, and the government has gradually eased quarantine restrictions to revive the coronavirus-hit economy. —Reuters
