Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan has urged new doctors to serve the country amid a severe shortage of healthcare workers, noting that over half of deaths in 2022 happened without patients ever seeing a physician.
Speaking at the 14th Commencement Exercises of the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health, Pangilinan appealed to graduates to “do good” and “do great,” updating their Hippocratic oath of “do no harm.”
“The Philippines has about one doctor for every 1,250 Filipinos. In rural areas, one doctor may cover entire towns, delivering babies at dawn, treating hypertension at noon, and signing burial certificates by night,” he said.
Pangilinan stressed that the country lacks at least 190,000 doctors, nurses, midwives, and other health workers, far below the World Health Organization’s recommended ratio of 10 doctors per 10,000 people. Only NCR and CAR meet this standard, while the national average is five per 10,000.
The senator asked the graduates to volunteer in public clinics, spend time in remote communities, or work full-time in government service to help dismantle corruption in the health system. He cited the PhilHealth fund issue, its zero budget for 2025, and the P11-billion Pharmally scam as examples of how corruption “steals from the sick.”
Reminding them that patients look to doctors for both treatment and hope, he challenged the new physicians to bring their education “where they matter most–in the service of our people, in the service of the least, the lost, and the last.”IMT
