DOKTOR NG BAYAN

With already one doctor in the family, Dr. Maria Krista and younger sister Josa Bernadette also finishing medicine two years from now, I have come to realize how financially difficult it is to send a child to the medical school.

A family has to spend no less than P100,000 per semester for a child to be able to study medicine and hope to become a doctor.

Can an average family earning even P10,000 a month afford this? Or can an ordinary farm worker who earns P150 per day dream that one day his child will be a doctor?

Definitely NO!

Even a teacher who receives P20,000 a month cannot send a child, however, brilliant and desirous to serve the poor he is, to the Davao Medical School Foundation (DMSF), which is actually the nearest and most inexpensive medical school to the Province of North Cotabato.

This explains why there are not so many doctors in North Cotabato.

This also explains why in the many medical and surgical missions which we have conducted in North Cotabato in coordination with the Maharlika Medical Foundation, our team of doctors was always overwhelmed by the sea of humanity seeking medical attention.

This reality prompted me to design a program I call “Doktor Ng Bayan” which I hope I will be able to implement by 2014 as Governor of North Cotabato.

Under the “Doktor Ng Bayan” program, 10 children of very poor families who have finished nursing, medical technology and other courses considered as preparatory degrees for medicine proper, will be selected every year and sent to the DMSF as scholars of the provincial government of North Cotabato.

To be covered by the scholarship grant are the school and laboratory fees, uniforms, books and instruments and a monthly stipend to be determined later which they can use for their board and lodging expense while in Davao City.

All of these expenses will be recorded and upon their graduation from the medical school, they will have to pay this back in a period of 10 years.

Right after graduation, however, they will be required to serve the people of North Cotabato first as government doctors who will be hired by the provincial government for five years.

After that, they will be free to seek more lucrative assignments in bigger hospitals.

Part of their contract, however, is a provision which will require them that on the 11th year of their medical practice, they will have to adopt one medical scholar each from among the children of poor families in the province.

This is the Big Brother component of the program where following the practice in North Cotabato and elsewhere in the Philippines, the older child of a poor family who has finished college and has found a job is asked to support his young siblings.

With the “Doktor Ng Bayan” program, the poor ice cream vendor, farm worker, restaurant worker and even a lowly tricycle driver can now hope and dream of having a doctor in the family.

On the other hand, the province of North Cotabato, on the 5th year of the 9th year of the program can expect 40 government doctors who are products of the “Doktor Ng Bayan” program serving the poor and the sick.

The implementation of the Big Brother component of the program will also ensure the sustainability of the “Doktor Ng Bayan” and instill in the minds of the people of North Cotabato that we are all brothers and sisters in this special place we call home and that we have to help one another overcome the adversities and succeed in life.

(Photo caption: Dr. Maria Krista, my eldest daughter, works on a patient during the medical surgical mission in Midsayap town Dec. 1, 2012.)