The Philippines Offers To Trade Nurses For COVID-19 Vaccines

On February 23, a senior official in the Philippines revealed that the country would be willing to send thousands of its health workers, mostly nurses, to work in Germany and the UK if the two countries agreed to fund COVID-19 vaccines for the country.

At the moment, the Philippines is one of the Asian countries with the highest number of new COVID-19 cases. On February 24, there were 1,555 new cases. The country has more than 566,000 positive cases with 12,129 deaths.

The Philippines has loosened its ban on sending medical workers overseas and allows 5,000 medical workers to travel and work abroad each year. Many nurses in the country oppose the quota set by the government, citing poor working conditions in the country and low wages.

Alice Visperas, director of the Department of International Affairs, the Philippine Department of Labor, said that the country was ready to raise the limit of overseas labor for medical staff in exchange for vaccines from the UK and Germany.

Among the millions of Filipinos working abroad, most of them work as nurses. The annual remittances sent home by overseas workers are up to $30 million.

In 2019, according to government data, 17,000 Filipino nurses signed contracts to work abroad.

Reuters stated that the Labor Department official’s idea of exchanging nurses for vaccines enraged many people. They feel disgusted by the way nurses and medical staff are viewed by the government as assets or exports.

The Philippines is expected to receive its first batch of vaccines this week from China. It hopes to buy 148 million doses of vaccine to vaccinate 70 million people, about two-thirds of its population.

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