Health in the Philippines

Health care in the Philippines varies from high class (e.g., St Luke's Medical Center, Quezon City), to non-existent (many rural municipalities). Most of the national burden of health care is taken up by private health providers.

Medical practitioners, nurses, nursing aides, midwives, caregivers, and health administrators, can all train for their profession in the Philippines. However, most cannot practice outside the Philippines without additional formal study and practical training, usually in the country they choose to migrate to.

There is no requirement in the Philippines for causes of death to be medically determined prior to registration of a death, so national statistics as to causes of death in the Philippines cannot be accurately substantiated. In the provinces, especially in places more remote from registries, births and deaths are often not recorded unless some family need arises, such as entry into college. When there is no legal process needed to pass on inheritance, the recording of deaths is viewed as unnecessary by the family.

Large areas of the Philippines do not have daily access to any pharmaceuticals at all.

In 2000 the Philippines had about 95,000 physicians, or about 1 per 800 people. In 2001 there were about 1,700 hospitals, of which about 40 percent were government run and 60 percent private, with a total of about 85,000 beds, or about one bed per 900 people. The leading causes of morbidity as of 2002 were diarrhea, bronchitis, pneumonia, influenza, hypertension, tuberculosis, heart disease, malaria, chickenpox, and measles. Cardiovascular diseases account for more than 25 percent of all deaths. According to official estimates, 1,965 cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were reported in 2003, of which 636 had developed acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Other estimates state that there may have been as many as 9,400 people living with HIV/AIDS in 2001