The Philippines has, in recent years, emerged as a new destination for Indian students to pursue medical education abroad, with the affordable cost of education and widespread use of English being key factors that have contributed to the island nation now hosting over 9,000 Indian students, mostly studying medicine.
Sources in the Indian embassy in the Philippines said that till recently, there was increasing interest among Indian students looking to study medicine in the Philippines, with around 9,000 Indian students now in the country, “around 90%” of whom are studying medicine.
“This number mostly comprises students who began studying here two-three years ago. There has been a slight decrease in numbers in the past two-three sessions because NMC (National Medical Commission) regulations in India want the student to be qualified to practice medicine in the country where they studied. The government in the Philippines is learnt to be working on this,” a source said.
The NMC’s Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations of 2021 ask that foreign medical graduates be registered with the “professional regulatory body or otherwise” which is competent to grant a license to practice medicine in the country where the medical degree is awarded.
A recently proposed amendment to the Philippine Medical Act allows foreign medical graduates who obtained degrees from medical schools in the Philippines to practice medicine in the country once they clear an examination.
Going by a response to a question in Parliament last year on the number of Indian students abroad, there were 9,665 Indian students pursuing higher education in the Philippines as of January 2024. In terms of the number of students, the Philippines was ranked eleventh on a list of 101 countries, above 9,500 students in France.
Since practicing medicine in the Philippines has not been an option so far, students have chosen to return to India or move to other countries like Australia, the USA, Canada, or the UK for higher studies, according to Faizan, who graduated from the Davao Medical School Foundation College of Medicine in 2023, and is now helping tutor students to clear the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination that they will have to clear to be able to practice in India.
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“The cost being around one-third of what we might have had to pay at a private college in India, and the clinical exposure provided as part of the medical course here were among the reasons I moved to study here,” said Faizan, who is from Jodhpur.
Riya Soni, 23, a third-year student at the Gullas College of Medicine, who is from Simdega in Jharkhand, said: “My NEET rank was not good enough for a seat in a government college, and a private college was too expensive for my family. So, we began researching for other colleges. The colleges here are affordable.”
Kadwin Pillai, CEO of Transworld Educare which collaborates with medical colleges in the Philippines to facilitate medical education for Indian students, also pointed to a key factor that has prompted the students to move to the Philippines — the common use of English. Pillai said that Indian students have been studying in the Philippines from the early 2000s, with a growing interest more recently as more Indian students look to study abroad.
Against this backdrop of the Philippines emerging as a country for students to pursue medical education, the Gullas College of Medicine in the province of Cebu in the island nation hosted an exchange summit last month to mark 75 years of ties between India and the Philippines.
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At the event held at the college, Harsh Kumar Jain, Ambassador of India to the Philippines, said: “Our bilateral trade surpassed $3.5 billion (in 2023-24). Investments in both directions are steadily growing. Our people-to-people contacts and tourism are poised to grow, with the Philippines rolling out the e-visa scheme for Indian nationals last October, and the likely commencement of direct flights between the two countries in the next few months.”
(The Indian Express was in the Philippines at the invitation of the Gullas College of Medicine and Transworld Educare)