EP 14: Filipino nurses during the pandemic

Early during the pandemic, President Rodrigo Duterte banned Filipino health care workers from leaving for work abroad. The reason was seen as logical as it was patriotic — why deploy nurses, for instance, abroad when the Philippines we are also battling a raging pandemic?

But the issue, it turned out, was much more complicated. yes, our health care system needed all the help it could. But how exactly did the initial deployment ban help our local pandemic response? It did it only provide unnecessary restrictions on our health care workers who wanted to leave because of limited opportunities here?

In this episode, Christian Esguerra talks to Filipino Nurse United President Maristela Abenojar and Philippine Overseas Employment Administrator Bernard Olalia to look into the plight of Filipino nurses and how the changing government policy on deployment has been affecting them  during the pandemic.