The Philippines is among the Asian countries that has the best hospitals counting with state-of-the-art technology, up-to-date equipment, ultra-modern facilities, irreproachable staff and doctors with a passion for excellence. Indubitably so, as attested to by a small but high-end market of Filipino and foreign patients who had passed through a medical experience in a time of illness in such hospitals as St. Luke’s Medical Center, Asian Hospital and Medical Center, The Medical City and World City Medical Center.
     This scenario seems flawless for the dawning of the Age of Medical Tourism in the Philippines. Two years ago, the prelude to this genesis occurred when government authorities started to publicly toy with the concept.
    These days, conventions and conferences for the promotion of medical tourism have been called together once too often, the latest being that of the Department of Tourism only last week, and the Philippine-Chinese Business Council two weeks ago. Participants and observers are now beginning to see some flaws in an otherwise perfect scenario.

                  Flaws in a Seeming Perfect Scenario
    Serious obstacles to a rousing success of medical tourism in the Philippines.
     Consider the following:
    There is, every year, a decreasing number of physicians in the Philippines. For obvious reasons, a physician who has spent a whopping amount of multi-thousands for his education cannot expect to be duly compensated for all his efforts in this Third World country. Therefore, his obsession is to move on to greener pastures in lands flowing with milk and honey such as the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and even the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. In fact, anywhere but the Philippines where he is up against astoundingly low wages.
    Young physicians in the Philippines even go to the lengths of acquiring a second degree–a Nursing degree! – just so they can work abroad where nurses receive higher pay than physicians in this country.
     And the nurses who receive even a far lower salary prefer to work as caregivers or chambermaids in progressive foreign countries where the corresponding pay for manual labor puts the Philippine counterpart wages to shame.

 

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