The Philippines is promising better pay for its nurses to lure them to the front lines against COVID-19, but a legacy of exploitation and poor working conditions in the nation's hospitals has dampened the enthusiasm to answer the call.
“If our nurses were to come back from overseas, the healthcare systems of those countries would collapse,” said Ted Herbosa, former Philippine Health Department undersecretary and an advisor to the nation’s COVID-10 task force.
A makeshift nurses station at a COVID-19 isolation facility set up in a parking lot in Quezon City, Philippines.Nurses were once criticized for leaving the Philippines. But in the 1970s the country began promoting the export of caregivers and other Philippine workers whose remittances lifted the economy. Those who went abroad were portrayed as. Today, money sent home by Philippine workers accounts for 10% of the nation’s gross domestic product, roughly equal to the role exports play in the U.S.
Safety concerns are high given the dearth of protective gear. At least 21 doctors and six nurses have died of the virus in the Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte angered the medical community when he said in March health workers were “lucky to die” in service of their country. Critics say the veneration of workers is designed to justify their sacrifice and obscure the government’s failings.
Nurse advocates say applicants are wary because the poor conditions and low wages that drive thousands of nurses to seek work overseas persist. Nurses are still waiting for the salary increase set by the Supreme Court in October that would triple wages in public hospitals to at least $600 a month. Jean Seno’s decade as a nurse has mostly been a series of contractual work that meant she would only be employed for a few months, with low wages and long hours. She started her career in her hometown of Cotabato in southern Philippines as a trainee with no pay. Feeling hopeless about work conditions ever improving, she recently sought employment overseas.
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