Filipino Nurses Support Group
Letter to the Editor

RE: Health workers migration deepens Asian health system crisis, March 29, 2006

March 29, 2006

Dear Editor,

I am one of the 15,000 nurses that Peter Cordingley, the World Health Organization’s regional spokesman, estimates leave the Philippines each year to seek jobs overseas.

For many years, I worked as an underpaid and overworked community health nurse in the countrysides of Pangasinan, struggling to provide better opportunities for my husband and two young children, struggling to serve the Filipino people the best way possible within a deepening political and economic crisis in the Philippines.

Because of this crisis, I was forced to migrate abroad for greener pastures, Canada being my destination. Quickly did I realize that my expectations of a better life in Canada were far beyond my reach.

I have been here for 2 ½ years not working as a nurse despite Canada’s nursing shortage. Instead I work as a slave under Canada Immigration’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). I slept in an un-insulated poorly-ventilated storage room, I hand-washed clothing including blood-soiled underwear, I provided 24-hour domestic help for elderly, children, and the family pets earning 4 times less than minimum wage.

I have been deskilled because of the Philippine government’s Labour Export Program. My personal and professional development has regressed because of Canadian Immigration programs, like the LCP, and of discriminatory barriers to accreditation. I am segregated as slave labour.

I have already had 6 employers because one laid me off, one died, one lost his job so he couldn’t afford me anymore, one fired me because I refused to sleep in a stranger’s house, one I escaped from abusive conditions where I ran through the forest at night with only the dim light of the nearest town as my guide.

6 employers and thousands of dollars in accreditation fees and immigration fees including 6 work permit fees later, do I and the thousands of other Filipino nurses under the LCP really have a better life in Canada? I, like many others, am forcibly separated from our families. I, like many others, am at high risk of deportation because to date, I only have 8 months declared of the LCP’s required 24 months within 3 years. 15 ½ months were spent waiting for my work permits.

The Philippine government should take more responsibility for genuine economic development that would provide livelihood at home instead of exporting us. Meanwhile, Canada should recognize Filipino nurses and other health workers now instead of using us as cheap labour. The systematic export of health workers only hurt the Filipino people at home and abroad.

Sincerely,

Sharon Lardizabal, Member of the Filipino Nurses Support Group, Vancouver, BC, Canada

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Health workers migration deepens Asian health system crisis  
 
First posted 07:30pm (Mla time) Mar 29, 2006  
By Teresa Cerojano
Associated Press  
 
POORLY paid and overworked health workers in Asia are increasingly migrating to developed countries to seek better jobs, deepening the crisis in the region's health systems, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Morale and wages have plummeted as many Asian governments have placed strict limits on the number of health workers and their salaries while also slashing spending on professional education.

Industrialized nations, meanwhile, have failed to produce health professionals and are resorting to international recruitment, according to a report released by the WHO's Western Pacific regional office.

"Increasingly, health workers are coming under pressure to 'vote with their feet' and change jobs or emigrate," said the report, released ahead of World Health Day on April 7.

"The mobility of the workforce and employment opportunities available in developed nations has led to a shortage of health professionals in key categories in many developing nations," it said.

Peter Cordingley, WHO's regional spokesman, said no precise data are available on the number of health workers migrating from Asia to the developed world, but that health experts are now looking into the phenomenon.

In the Philippines alone, 15,000 nurses leave the country each year to seek jobs overseas, and even doctors are training as nurses so they, too, can join the exodus, he said.

WHO estimates that there's a global shortage of 4.25 million doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists and support workers. A total of 57 countries -- mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia -- fall below the minimum threshold of 2.3 doctors, nurses and midwives per 1,000 people.

WHO urged Asian governments to invest in their health systems to attract and retain sufficient personnel while requesting that developed countries adopt responsible recruitment policies in coordination with health ministers and training institutions in countries facing shortages.