While the right to health is guaranteed by no less than the constitution, still 60 percent of Filipinos die without seeing a health professional. As the country remains the number one exporter of nurses in the world, about 1,000 hospitals have either fully or partially closed down due to lack of nurses particularly in the provinces.

Several studies have documented the deficiencies and insufficiencies in the Philippine healthcare system. To begin with, healthcare spending in the country remains one of the lowest in the Southeast Asian region. The country’s health spending is only about 3 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), which is below the 5 percent recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO). As a major consequence, University of the Philippines President Emerlinda R. Roman observed that basic health status indicators such as life expectancy at birth, infant and child mortality rate and maternal mortality ratio, reveal an increasingly widening gap between the health conditions of poor communities and affluent communities.

In an attempt to confront the inequities in the healthcare system, a group of university professors led by former health secretaries Alberto Romualdez and Jaime Galvez-Tan among other health luminaries, formed the “UP Blueprint for Universal Healthcare 2010-2015 and Beyond.” The group outlined six building blocks to institute genuine healthcare reform in the country such as health financing, health services organization, health governance, health information, access to medicines and health human resources.

Recognizing that health human resources, represented by doctors, nurses, midwives and other health workers, is necessary to achieve universal healthcare, the pharmaceutical industry has embarked on a major undertaking with the government to improve the healthcare delivery in the country.

The Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), composed of Filipino and global drug companies, has joined the government as its first major partner for Project Nurses Assigned in Rural Service (NARS) in a bid to achieve fair, just and equal access to health for every Filipinos particularly the poor.

PHAP, through the PHAPCares Foundation, has mobilized more than a hundred registered nurses to become health frontliners in the country’s poorest communities in the provinces. Believing in the skills, capabilities and innate compassion of Filipino nurses to make a difference in the lives and health of Filipinos, the PHAPCares Foundation has sponsored 165 nurses for deployment to remote areas that are being considered among the 1,000 poorest municipalities in the country. Out of the 165 nurses sponsored, the GlaxoSmithKline Foundation is supporting about 100 nurses under Project NARS.

In line with the pump priming strategies to mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo launched the Project NARS in February 2009 during the Multi-Sectoral Summit on "Joining Hands Against the Global Crisis". Project NARS is jointly implemented by the Department of Labor and Employment, the Department of Health, Professional Regulation Commission and the Board of Nursing.The Project NARS, a training cum deployment program, aims to address the (1) glut in inexperienced nurses and the proliferation of "volunteer nurses" working in hospitals without being paid, but instead, they themselves pay the hospitals to obtain Certificate of work experience; and (2) to promote health of the people and bring the government closer to them.

Unemployed nurses will be mobilized in their hometowns as warriors for wellness to do the three I's: Initiate primary health, school nutrition, maternal health programs, first line diagnosis; inform about community water sanitation practices and also do health surveillance; and immunize children and mothers. They shall likewise serve as roving nurses for rural schools.

The PHAPCares sponsored nurses have also been in the forefront of the government’s A(H1N1) information and education campaign in far flung communities. Some of the NARS nurses have also been tasked to help in curbing the rise of communicable diseases following the several destructive typhoons that battered the country last year.

“It is our privilege to be the government’s first major partner in this initiative where we can support our nurses. Moreover, Project NARS is also fully in line with our healthcare reform advocacy to improve the health and lives of the Filipinos particularly the poor, sick and disadvantaged,” said PHAP President and Executive Director Reiner W. Gloor.

Gloor added: “It is in these poorest communities where we would want our presence felt because they are those who cannot afford healthcare simply because they have empty pockets.”

PHAPCares Sponsored Nurses

“The association has remarkably responded to the call of President Arroyo to support NARS, thus making the program a national undertaking with private equity,” said Roque during the signing of Memorandum Agreement between PHAPCares Foundation and the implementing government departments and agencies.

PHAPCares sponsored nurses have been deployed at an average of five per town in the country’s poorest municipalities, for a six-month tour of duty. These nurses went through extensive training and development for competency enhancement in accordance with the training program designed by the Department of Health in collaboration with the PRC-BON. The training program covered both the clinical and public health functions.

PHAPCares Foundation Executive Director Glecy Cuenco has urged the private sector to incorporate this kind partnership in their corporate social responsibility programs.

“We, at PHAPCares Foundation, are calling on the private sector to invest on the health of our countrymen. We can empower the poor by making them feel good about their health and therefore live more productive lives. Health is something that will directly benefit an individual and his family and then community,” said Cuenco.

Arianne Ivy Rozario, one of the sponsored nurses of the PHAPCares Foundation in Abra, testified that poor patients are the ones benefitting from the deployment of additional nurses in the provincial hospital where she has been assigned.

“There are a lot of indigent patients in our hospital but only a few employees, especially nurses. Thus, our presence in said hospital has helped in timely provision of health care services to the people,” shared Rozario. “I pray that in the future more NGOs like PHAPCares would help the NARS project to ensure better health care in our country.”

PHAPCares’ sponsored nurses have also been fielded to schools in remote areas to assess the overall health condition of the children.

“I’m concerned about the health of the pupils because most of them are below normal,” said sponsored nurse Cecilia Paguntalan who is based in Aklan.

Despite having to travel in remote villages, Paguntalan however, said that she could not forget the warm hospitality of the teachers and children who consider her not as a visitor but a blessing for being a warrior of wellness sent to help them with their health concerns.

Complementing the Project NARS partnership, the PHAPCares Foundation is humbled by the generous support of member companies for the past years. PHAP members donated P600 million worth of medicines since its founding in 2003. The bulk of these medicines went straight to the 34 DOH and LGU supported hospitals in the various provinces, the Department of National Defense-National Disaster Coordinating Council, the Armed Forces of the Philippines Reserve Command and other partner institutions.

For more information about Project NARS and other corporate social responsibility programs, please log on to www.phap.org.ph and www.phapcares.com