HBN 7089, AN ACT ESTABLISHING A TRIPARTITE COUNCIL TO ADDRESS UNEMPLOYMENT, UNDEREMPLOYMENT AND JOB-SKILLS MISMATCH
Mr. President, my dear colleagues:
As Chairperson of the Committee on Higher, Technical and Vocational Education, I rise to sponsor Committee Report No. 208, entitled “An Act Establishing a College of Medicine in the University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines-Cagayan De Oro City Campus located in Cagayan De Oro City, Province of Misamis Oriental, to be known as the University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines-College of Medicine, and Appropriating Funds Therefor”.
From its beginnings as an American-founded trade school, the almost century-old institution is one of the oldest in Mindanao.
Through the years, in whatever era, this school has reinvented and reoriented itself many times in order to meet the challenges at hand – and ahead.
True to its innovation spirit, USTP will now embark on a new program that addresses a felt public need—health care. Health care for all.
By opening a school for physicians, it is also the university’s way of heeding the pandemic’s one painful lesson: That the government must lead in training doctors.
Such cannot be left to individual initiative and private wealth alone.
Even before Covid struck, the Secretary of Health said we were already 114,000 short of doctors, in what could be described as our society’s preexisting comorbidity.
In training more physicians, there is not only the current shortage to wipe out but there is also the future population increases that must be contended with.
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.
In the end, the demographic scale is our growing greying population, expected to reach 21 million in one generation’s time, or by 2050, and as more Filipinos live longer, they will require more doctors.
Sabi nga Pangulo noong Pebrero 26, there were already 10 million seniors like him two years ago.
So as this demographic expands, the support infrastructure for them must also grow.
With the establishment of a College of Education at USTP, qualified young persons from the nearby five Mindanao regions will now have a school where their skills will be honed.
USTP will join 16 private schools and 16 state universities in teaching and training thousands of future MDs for grueling missions in life ahead.
But this taxpayer-funded program is not about quantity alone, but quality as well. And USTP has been reviewed and assessed to have met all.
This is just the most recent bill that meets the urgent care needs of our people today while we future-proof our nation with the medical care that a growing population requires.