SENATOR Francis Escudero urged his colleagues to pass various bills that seek to create more public medical schools, saying the country needs more doctors

“If there is one painful lesson that the pandemic has taught us, it is the fact that even if we produce them in industrial scale, we cannot have enough doctors,” Escudero said.

“Even before Covid19 struck, the Secretary of Health said we were already 114,000 short of doctors, in what could be described as our society’s pre-existing comorbidity,” he added.

The chairman of the Senate Committee on Higher, Technical and Vocational Education pointed out that the country not only has to plug the big shortage of doctors, it also has to produce more physicians to take care of the medical needs of a growing population.

“Even if our population increase will decelerate and stabilize at 1.5 million a year, this would still have to be matched with new entrants to the medical profession,” Escudero said.

Severall measures have been filed that will allow five state universities to establish their own college of medicine — Benguet State University in the Cordilleras, Southern Luzon State University in Quezon Province; University of Eastern Philippines in Northern Samar; Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University in La Union and Visayas State University in Southern Leyte.

“These schools are centers of excellence, consistently turn in excellent board examinations scores, and are research and innovation hubs,” Escudero told his colleagues.

“Not only are they academically prepared and will soon be facility-ready, they have in their communities public and private hospitals, which could both provide training to students and faculty to the college of medicine,” he added.

Escudero said the additional medical schools will boost Republic Act 11509 or the Doktor Para Sa Bayan Act that aims to establish a medical scholarship and return service program for deserving students who want to pursue a degree in medicine.

“At present, the program is offered in 16 private schools and 16 state universities with funded slots for 3,600 scholars this year. The five bills I am introducing through this omnibus sponsorship speech will bring it to 21,” the senator said.