House OKs medical scholarship, return service bill on 3rd reading

The House of Representatives on Monday approved on third and final reading the measure seeking to establish a scholarship and return service program for students who intend to pursue a degree in medicine.

Voting 245-0, the chamber approved House Bill 6756, or "An Act Establishing a Medical Scholarship and Return Program for Deserving Students and Appropriating Funds Therefor."

Cagayan De Oro City Representative Rufus Rodriguez, one of the primary authors of the measure, envisions that the proposed law is "the answer to the lack of doctors in rural areas."

“It will open the opportunity for poor but deserving students to pursue a degree in medicine and serve their communities in the countryside,” he said.

Under the measure, an applicant for the medical scholarship and return service program should be a Filipino citizen, a graduate or graduating student of a prerequisite course of a degree of doctor of medicine, and must have passed the entrance examination and complied with other requirements for admission of the state or private college or university he or she intends to enroll in.

The applicant must also have obtained a national medical admission test score mandated by the Commission on Higher Education and the cut-off required by the school he or she plans to go to.

At least one scholar must come from each town in the country, the measure states. If no one qualifies from the town, another scholar may be selected from the neighboring municipality.

Scholars would be given financial assistance covering tuition and other school fees, allowance for books, equipment, supplies, dormitory, clothing, and transportation, fees for internship and medical board review, and other related miscellaneous and living expenses.

They are then obliged to serve their town for at least four years. Refusal to do so would require them to return twice the amount of what the government spent for their medicine degree.

Following the approval on third reading, the measure will be sent to the Senate for its own deliberation and consideration. — BM, GMA News