By Francis M. Bilowan
The Philippines remains a favorite destination for foreign students as the Bureau of Immigration (BI) reported a 20-percent increase in the number of foreigners who were issued study visas by the bureau for current school year 2010-2011.
In a report to Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan, BI student desk head Teodulo Estrada said that as of June this year, a total of 6,416 foreign students were issued student visas by his office for this year’s first semester, compared to the 5,343 who enrolled in the same period last year.
Estrada said the figures were still tentative and would surely go up further as there were still hundreds of foreign students processing their visa applications with his office.
“And these figures only pertain to foreign students who applied for visas at our main office,” said Estrada, as he disclosed that BI field offices outside of Metro Manila were also authorized to accept and process student visa applications.
He said that aside from the BI main office, there has been a steady increase in student visa applications filed with the bureau’s field offices in key cities such as those in Cebu, Baguio , Davao , Angeles, and Iloilo.
Estrada said that language schools in the country have the most number of foreign students, followed by the different state universities and colleges.
“Cebu and Baguio City have the most number of foreign students,” Estrada said.
In my medical reviews at Newark, NJ, I met many overseas-physicians from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Jordan who knew that I was Filipino and spoke to me in their broken Tagalog. I was astonished. On further discussions and introduction, I found out that they were product of Philippine Medical Schools: University of the Philippines, University of the East and the prestigious Santo Tomas Medical School.
Three of them were neurosurgeons, 2 where interventional cardiologists and one was a psychiatrist. All of them were trained and specialized in the Philippines.
There is no question on the excellence of Philippine Educational Systems. I would even dare to claim that Philippine Medical Schools are one of THE best medical schools in the world. The way Philippine Medical Schools teach their students are--gold standard. They implement a strong basic-science background (rigorous competition), and a complementary problem-based solving technique when teaching clinical medicine--then send Medical Students to medical missions throughout the Philippines on 3-4 month blocks.
I met a friend, who was a recent graduate from University of Philippines School of Medicine in Manila, and told me about their 3 month Community Medicine Block. He was sent to one of the poor barangays in Antipolo and served and worked with the local community physician there to deliver children (hundreds delivered) and performed general urological surgery--he performed hundreds of circumcisions in a 3 month span--and with it a lengthy clinical experience.
Philippine Medical Schools teach not only the books--but the clinical experience is colorful. What students like myself read about in text books such as leprosy (lepromatous types), various types of E.coli infections that are unheard of here in the 'states, or various cases of cholera, yersinia pestis (bubonic plague) that are still viable in S.E Asia (non-existant and unheard of here in the US) can be seen and treated in the Philippines.
My friend, Christopher (that is his name), is a Fil-AM who went to college here in the United States, but went to medical school in the Philippines (UP) and finished his rotations there. We are both now very good friends.
Philippine-Trained Doctors are very well-rounded.
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