MANILA (Xinhua): The Philippines added 37,098 new registered nurses in 2024, a member of the Philippines' House of Representatives said on Friday.
Representative Marvin Rillo said that these registered nurses are most likely to work abroad despite the country's shortage of nurses.
"Largely due to the pressure to survive, some of them will likely seek immediate employment, even if it means taking on other jobs and not practicing nursing," said Rillo, vice chair of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education.
"We are not paying our new nurses enough to encourage them to practice their profession," Rillo said. "We must invest more in our nurses if we want to retain some of them in the local health sector."
The Philippines has been confronted with a growing shortage of nurses. According to the World Health Organization, the country now has a shortage of 127,000 nurses. If left unchecked, the shortage is expected to increase to 250,000 by 2030.
The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) said on Thursday it has logged 577 road accidents nationwide during the holiday season, with at least six deaths.
The agency said the road accidents tallied from Dec. 22, 2024, to Jan. 2, 2025, were 33.5 percent higher than that in the same period of the previous year.
The DOH said the cases involved drivers who did not use safety gear such as seatbelts and drivers under the influence of alcohol.
The agency said more than 400 crashes involved motorcycles. Four of the six deaths were from motorcycle accidents. - Xinhua
