Contrary to the claims of a group of Filipino nurses, the Philippines' Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) maintained that the global demand for locally-trained medical practitioners remains high especially in Western countries with an aging population. Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said the global demand for Filipino nurses is high but the lack of adequate and necessary experience prevents many of them from finding overseas employment. “(The only question) is how acceptable they would be given their experience,” Roque was quoted by GMAnews.tv as saying. The Labor chief rebuked the claims of the Philippine Nursing Association (PNA) earlier this month that an oversupply of Filipino nurses has resulted from the declining demand for nurses in the United States and United Kingdom. Roque asserted that Saudi Arabia alone is “in need of 10,000 nurses for their public hospitals” and they are looking for Filipino nurses to fill in these vacancies. He said there is also a growing demand for Filipino nurses in Canada as well as Australia. While he admitted that the US is putting a cap on the entry of Filipino nurses, Roque said this should not prevent Filipinos from looking at other possible market for capable nurses. “We are preventing the demand because we don't want them to leave in fear that the supply will run out. But there are (other) markets for them,” Roque said. Earlier, Dr. Leah Samaco-Paquiz, president of the PNA, said the demand for Filipino nurses had “plateaued” in the US since 2006 because of the “visa retrogression” there. “In the US, the quota for visas has been filled up resulting in delayed processing of visas with current efforts focused on 2006 accepted applicants,” Paquiz said. She added that “many licensed nurses are now underemployed or unemployed as a result of changes of policy in destination countries, the current situation of oversupply and quality problems, among others.” Despite this situation, Dean Leonora Reyes, vice president of Association of Deans of Philippine Colleges of Nursing, said they could not discourage people from taking up nursing. “We cannot tell people not to enroll but they should choose the reputable program (nursing schools) that can deliver. They must go to reputable institution, (the ones that are) accredited because priority is given to those coming to these schools,” Reyes said. Meanwhile, Dr. Marilyn Lorenzo, director of University of the Philippines' Institute of Health Policy and Development Studies, recalled that the demand for Filipino nurses begun to rise in 1999 but slowed down in 2006. The demand for nurses abroad had led to the rise in nursing schools and graduates in the Philippines. In 1999, the number of nursing graduates was only 5,672 while in 2004 and 2005, the number of graduates increased to 14,383 and 34,589, respectively. But experts believed that the boom in nursing would again happen after 10 years.
