"Doctors have to eat and educate their children too," he says.
A 35-year-old obstetrician who graduated in 1995 says about half of the 300 doctors she graduated with have left, mostly after retraining as nurses.
"Medicine is my life," she says. "I think you enter this profession wanting to make a difference. But here in the Philippines we just don't have the tools to administer quality health care," she says.
"It's pathetic. Pathetic that we have a system where hospitals are closing simply because they do not have enough doctors. I have worked in both the private and public sectors. In government hospitals a doctor can work 14 hours or more a day. The hospital I work in has a 78-bed maternity ward but only 50 beds and it is not uncommon to see three women share one bed," she says.
"In the private sector it is an eight-hour day, one patient a bed and a room. If you have the money, quality health care is not a problem even in poor countries. But having said that, it is getting more and more difficult to find good specialists. Even they are leaving," she says.
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