Why Does Philippines, Top Exporter Of Nurses Face A Shortage At Home? | Undercover Asia

for over 50 years the developed world looked to the philippines to shore up a scarce resource [Music] nurses and for many filipino nurses working overseas is a lifeline a chance at a better life in the u.s it's at least 10 times of your salary in the philippines but in april last year the philippine government imposed a deployment ban grounding those dreams to a halt unable to leave the country nurses could no longer take on overseas jobs [Music] yet a year after the ban few have heeded the call to serve at home they would rather leave the profession because they're burnt out some of them have actually started exploring jobs in call centers 15 minutes undercover asia enters the covid 19 front lines to investigate if the government is doing enough to save those who are saving lives ho but charmaine had to return to manila after the clinic she worked for in saudi arabia closed clinic my countrymen good evening the crisis is very very clear covet 19 is spreading all throughout the country try to obey what government is suggesting or ordering you to do march 2020 the philippines records its first local transmission of covid 19. to contain the virus 12 million residents of the nation's capital are placed on lockdown the country goes into a state of public health emergency referral hospitals for severe cases of kovid 19. uh to serve as isolation rooms in preparation if we will be exceeding our original capacity and we will go into surge capacity barely a month later the government bans filipino nurses from going abroad so when charmaine returned from saudi arabia she found herself stuck in the country in july and that mean that isn't alone the ban leaves thousands of nurses like her in limbo coined from the word prisoners they've come to call themselves prison nurses robbed of their livelihoods and careers the nurses demanded answers from the government [Music] the outcry forced the country's labor secretary to hold numerous public zoo meetings with health care and migrant worker unions to explain its position the country is short of at least 23 000 health care workers we already have more than 150 000 and we cannot afford to be deploying our nurses abroad at the expense of losing the services of our nurses and overburdened and understaffed the healthcare system is on the brink of collapse warned medical workers in the philippines [Music] the pandemic [Music] about to lose our livelihood [Music] why won't nurses take on jobs in the philippines when we heard about the deployment ban we were so shocked and angry about it that group of us came together researchers in singapore and the philippines and decided that we needed to interview as many nurses as we could so we could document what they were going through at anonymous agency most as a sociologist associate professor yasmin ortiga has been studying nurses and migration for 10 years in the meantime pablica hospital based on her interviews with filipino nurses affected by the ban she found it can take a nurse anywhere from 5 to 10 years before they can qualify for jobs overseas you have your nursing degree that you're invested in and you had to pay a lot it's one of the most expensive courses that you can ever major in in the philippines and then they had to invest in doing the board exam and then you actually need two years of work experience in order to qualify for overseas work and this is where it becomes really expensive and then they had to pay for you know multiple exams an english exam or a language exam if you want to go to germany and all those papers expire so even if the ban is only temporary if they expire where we're back to zero once again so it's investments of time and money that kind of get wasted with so much already invested into her nursing career today charmaine is back at a job agency having been stuck in the philippines for months her previous overseas job offers have all been rescinded now she hopes to line up a new posting abroad in case the ban lifts okay so what have you been doing the past months some of the agencies application agencies like this one are preparing for the day the deployment ban lifts global demand for filipino nurses is on the rise our government hospitals so among western countries are united states united kingdom and germany it's a german in a man we have a client that pays on 2 000 euros per month dumanna bus lagging more than one hundred thousand one hundred thirty to one hundred fifty thousand pesos per month uk together with otp a lot of us in the us you can potentially earn around 200 to 400 000 pesos per month it's at least 10 times of your salary in the philippines that i will support and defend the constitution of the philippines that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same with such a huge pay rise on offer overseas it's estimated that among those who pass their nursing exams nearly two in five will eventually end up working abroad [Music] we are number 22 in the world as far as number of fuckabish cases charity begins at home so despite being stuck in the philippines qualified nurses like charmaine are refusing to take up nursing vacancies in the country because they are not getting the pay they want [Music] [Music] [Music] if they are unable to ever leave the philippines they will not go back to the hospital they would rather leave the profession because they're burnt out some of them have actually started exploring jobs in call centers instead of just preventing those who have done their time to from leaving the government should focus on trying to get the nurses who have left the profession to come back and entice them with a regular salary with benefits with proper protections and hazard pay by law public health nurses in the philippines are actually entitled to a higher base pay than what they are currently earning [Music] salary grade 15 refers to a mid-level grade in a 33 grade table [Music] at 680 us dollars it is the minimum starting salary for nurses guaranteed by the philippine nursing act but for over 18 years junior nurses enter public hospitals at salary grade 11 or 490 us dollars a month four grades lower and nearly 30 percent less money than what they are entitled to by law for almost two decades nurses have been fighting for their rightful wage since the law was passed the problem is the lack of funds it is not uncommon in the philippines that there are many unfunded laws the department of health's budget was essentially flat since the late 1990s if the budget is flat then there is no other source of funding where you can get to pay the increases to live decently a family of five in manila would need at least 20 us dollars a day however as a staff nurse in a public hospital nurse pauline only earns 13 us dollars a day just three u.s dollars above the minimum wage in manila [Music] [Music] pauline is making barely enough to make ends meet [Music] [Music] [Applause] pauline's husband was also recently retrenched forcing her to find other means to supplement the family's income so she started an online business foreign to encourage more health workers to serve in the front lines the government signed an administrative order to augment their salaries for every single day of work during the pandemic the government will pay every health worker an extra 500 pesos or 10 u.s dollars however eight months after the administrative order for hazard pay was signed signs of trouble emerge releases there are still unpaid hazard pay total of 16 764 have not received their hazard pay palolo [Music] [Music] the philippines is the world's largest source of foreign nurses but it has the lowest number of nurses per capita in southeast asia and in many geographically isolated parts of the country nurses are in even shorter supply is the philippines has an average nurse to population ratio of one nurse to every five thousand people but here in itagon it's just one nurse for every twenty thousand people nurse darlene has been working in a small district hospital in ethogon for ten years [Music] um today darlene is the [Music] there are six other staff nurses serving the hospital but the number is just enough to cover all the shifts in a given week every day nurse darlene also doubles as an infection control nurse in itagon's temporary treatment facility where covid positive patients are quarantined [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] according to a national study published in 2018 as many as three out of four local government units in the philippines lack health workers but there are districts in the philippines that are capable of achieving a better nurse to population ratio how do they do it [Applause] pasig city one of 16 districts in the capital manila has one nurse for every 1 800 people that's 2.5 times higher than the national average so with the onset of phobias critical or non-urgent class the newly revamped command center is part of pasek's huge investment in healthcare the city invested 51 million us dollars in its healthcare budget in 2020 a nearly 50 percent increase from the year before this has allowed the city to hire more than 70 nurses working in the different departments of the command center for example nurses were employed to handle the incoming calls from the city's covit 19 hotline to direct suspected cases to the right facilities prepare the classifications of thomas to ensure a patient is cared for even in transit pasig city has also employed nurses to ride in the ambulances that send patients to its hospitals and finally passing city also ensures that their quarantine facility has multiple nurses on shift health problems then mild cases the huge disparity in nurse to population ratios in various districts is the result of a 1991 law for decentralization it transferred many responsibilities from the central government to more than 3 000 local governments this includes health care this means each local government could decide how much to pay nurses and how many nurses to hire when the health care system was devolved the money that was given by national government to local governments does not have any specification that this goes to health agriculture or other sectors because the principle of the pollution is the people on the ground know best where to spend the money that they have this could explain why some local government units tend to spend more say on infrastructure building more roads or helping the farmers unfortunately not many districts choose to invest in health healthcare the pandemic revealed varying healthcare needs of individual local government units and the need for a unified defense against the virus and the national government tried to respond setting aside 9.8 billion us dollars to fight the pandemic part of this or about 277 million us dollars was meant to augment the salaries of health care workers serving in the front lines across the country it comes in the form of hazard pay or about 10 us dollars per day per front line worker but that too has run into trouble total of 16 764 have not received their hazard pay and the reason for it is that the reason for this is there's no funding no more funding again the decentralization of healthcare the department of health maintains is the culprit control young's lg use and how they will give the hazard pay their nurses the game fragmented in services lgus priorities while nurses continue to go over and above the line of duty they have been left high and dry by the [Music] government [Music] oh [Music] [Music] nurses are not just being underpaid department of health now we have a sufficient ppe for indi one nurses say they're being sent to the front lines unprotected [Music] eight hours to 12 hours so silla [Music] when the pandemic began the philippine government assured frontliners that they will be given everything they require to save lives about one million medical protective items are being acquired right now with the government and the private sector working together to purchase or produce the necessary quantities however four months after that announcement nurses continued to work under dangerous conditions because they lacked personal protective equipment or ppes undercover asia gathered a group of nurses in public hospitals across manila to find out just how bad the situation is and the biggest burden is amid a public outcry over the lack of ppe's for healthcare workers the department of health held a zoo meeting with representatives of healthcare workers to address the issue request through their requests try to sit down with your infectious control together with your shifters or your chip of hospital to request with regards to ppe case in mind but health workers continue to insist that this is far from the reality they are living in day in day out at one point healthcare workers had to depend on public and private organizations to augment their supply of personal protective equipment or ppes we use the social media facebook we posted and we are thankful for in some cases due to the scarcity of ppes nurses had to buy their own may 2020 municipal hospital three nurses here had caught kobet 19. fortunately all three recovered as 47 year old maria teresa cruz celebrates her colleague's recovery she's seen wearing a brown ppe that she had to buy for herself a sign of the dire shortage of ppes [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign july 17 2020 nurse teresa is admitted to the hospital signs of trouble came earlier two days prior she had reported to her employer about having multiple tell-tale symptoms of covid19 fever cough and the loss of taste and smell but instead of the more reliable swab test she was given two rapid tests both came back negative within four days of admission she starts to have difficulty breathing that same day she was given a swab test known to be more reliable than the rapid tests [Music] foreign within five days maria theresa cruz was dead three days after her death her swap test results confirmed she had coveted 19. [Music] her daughter joey cruz wants answers with the help of her legal counsel she has filed a case against her mother's employer for negligence she had all the telltale signs of covet 19 already know hindi joy's case is partly based on a department of health memorandum that rapid tests should not be used to definitively rule out covid19 the memorandum also states that rapid tests must be used in conjunction with rt pcr or swab tests joy contends that her mother may not have died if she was diagnosed earlier and treated on time we want to seek accountability [Music] as of march this year 82 health workers in the philippines have lost their lives in the line of duty healthcare workers also make up 13 of the country's total covet cases that's far higher than the average of two to three percent found in many neighboring countries [Music] joy's final shock came when she received a message from the hospital's finance department the message stated that on top of her mother's base pay she would be paid 60.93 pesos a day for hazard pay that's one dollar 26 u.s cents a far cry from the 10 us dollars a day that maria and many of her fellow nurses thought the government had promised [Music] nurse pauline counts herself lucky because of one simple fact she survived she spent more than six months serving in the covert triage areas although she has since been assigned out of the covert triage areas the experience has left her shaken payroll foreign [Music] foreign experienced or mid-level nurses in the philippines are currently paid the lowest in southeast asia [Music] in 2019 the philippine supreme court ruled that the nursing act of 2002 must be carried out and nurses should not be paid lower than salary grade 15 or 680 u.s dollars a rise of four grades from their current starting grade now but the execution of the court ruling created even more furore instead of raising nurses pay across all ranks only the minimum wage of nurses below salary grade 15 was raised [Music] [Music] more senior nurses who had expected a similar pay rise instead found themselves demoted so that their wage remains unchanged in the midst of a pandemic when many countries are increasing their budgets for health care the department of health suffers an 836 million us dollar cut in its 2021 budget this includes money specifically proposed for the deployment of nurses throughout the country so we have to cut the number of deployed nurses 12 that would be about angabawa versus 2319 slugs it sends a message that you're not really important or you're not valued for a lot of nurses they felt that they were really looked down upon also by both hospitals and the government nine months after returning from saudi arabia charmaine remains unemployed until this morning benefits thank you thank you charmaine's job was made possible after the government caved into pressure from nursing unions to lift the eight-month long deployment ban the ban on the deployment of filipino health workers is now lifted will have the the spirit [Music] undefearable to serve the filipino people because we also need help and we have a crisis also to deal with the lifting sparked an immediate exodus of hundreds of nurses like charmaine so finally for 14 years pauline had chosen to stay in the philippines to serve her fellow countrymen whom she felt needed nurses like her now she's choosing to put her family [Music] this is a time when we realized that this group of professions we've undervalued we actually really really need them and so now their demands that they have been making for years suddenly have more salience but the question is will they actually institute long-term change especially after the pandemic is over [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 410,665

Keywords: CNA, CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, People stories, Asian perspective, Undercover Asia 8, Undercover Asia, documentary, Philippines, Asia, Southeast Asia, Asia news, nurses, healthcare, COVID-19, pandemic, coronavirus, healthcare workers, prisonurses, nursing, frontline, frontline workers, deployment ban on nurses, nurse shortage, full documentary, narrated, investigative, inhouse

Id: 3F1qTKPeft4

Length: 46min 28sec (2788 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/zjzr_08]

Nakakadismaya talaga malaman na ganun kababa binibigay natin sa mga healthworkers. Yung story especially ni Dr. Maria Theresa Cruz na may problema sila sa PPEs, tapos binigyan ng rapid test, namatay ilang araw lang, tapos sobrang liit ng hazard pay. Why aren't there as much public outrage from this? The fact also that the national government freaking SLASHED the DoH budget when it's probably the most obvious display of doing something in a pandemic, shows they likely don't care -- it's insane because I don't think even the corrupt leaders of the past would be this insensitive for the situation happening.

[u/babycart_of_sherdog]

Ayan, naglantaran na...

As much as possible, nurses don't like "airing dirty laundry," kaya naman madalas akong nagsasabi ngayon na "as of now, don't take up nursing" sa mga prosepective students. This is one of those reasons why.

Bibigyan ka ng hope na "take nursing to go abroad" tapos ito ihahambalos sa iyo, add the Wuhan virus to the mix and you got a physical and mental health threat double whammy. Pag na-discourage ka, sayang ang 4 years mo...

[u/ifckinlovemashpotato]

Isipin mo. gagastos ka ng malaki para makapagtapos, ilalagay mo ang dugo't pawis mo sa trabaho mo para sa kakarampot na bayad.

[u/AKAJun2x]

Sabi ng isang makatang nurse din (Gloc9), "napakaraming nars dito sa atin, at nag-aabroad sila"