The rising number of overseas Filipino workers with Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV have reached 5,537 owing to the inadequate medical examinations being conducted by some government accredited clinics for overseas employment.
Migration and recruitment expert Emmanuel Geslani said Tuesday some Department of Health-accredited clinics were involved in the “rampant practice” of giving illegal rebates to recruitment agencies, which resulted in “cutthroat competition” among clinics and insufficient medical examinations of Filipinos bound for work abroad.
Geslani cited some cases of OFWs who were sent back to the Philippines after a second medical exam in the host country after being discovered with illnesses such as Hepatitis B, HIV, malaria, and even faulty X-ray results.
“Some medical clinics are also not performing the required I-Clinical Lab Results as required by the DoH,” he said.
Geslani urged the DoH to ban clinics found violating the medical tests and to ensure the integrity of all lab tests performed on OFWs, which may result in their deportation by their host countries if they are found to have infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases or tuberculosis.
Geslani, who owns ESG Consultancy Services, said some recruitment agencies receive certain amount or rebates from their favored clinics for every applicant they referred.
“Under Circular No. 1, series of 1990, the Bureau of Licensing and Regulation of the DoH prohibits the giving of rebates and considers it a ‘violation of its rules and regulations which shall be dealt with severity,’” he noted.
At present, the regulated fee for DoH accredited medical clinics for overseas applicants is P3,500.
However, some clinics are charging as low as P1,800 to capture a large portion of the applicants, or are given rebates of P500 for every applicant to the recruitment agency.
“These result in inferior medical examinations,” Geslani said. “Over 800,000 new hires including seafarers are being deployed to the Middle East and other countries every year.”