24 
The Philippine Journal of Science 
1920 
deficits may result. A plan similar to the one outlined above is 
already in operation in the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, 
and its ten general hospitals hardly cost the Insular Treasury 
120,000 pesos a year. 
Should this proposition meet with the approval of the author- 
ities and be carried out, it would be advisable to amend Act 
2801 in the sense of authorizing the installation of pay sections 
at the provincial hospitals for the benefit of the well-to-do classes. 
It would be manifestly unjust to the latter, who are naturally the 
heaviest taxpayers, to find themselves debarred from the hospital 
in case of personal sickness or sickness in their own families. 
One of the drawbacks to any intensive campaign against in- 
fant mortality in this country is the woeful lack of trained 
personnel that could be trusted with the management of pueri- 
culture centers ; it might be interesting to know that in the whole 
Philippines there are altogether not more than 969 practicing 
physicians, which gives the proportion of 1 physician to every 
11,175 inhabitants, as against 1 to every 700 inhabitants in the 
United States. 
This evident shortage of physicians is rendered more acute on 
account of their irregular distribution, there being in Manila alone 
not less than 250, while a similar condition prevails to a lesser 
extent in the smaller cities of Cebu, Iloilo, and Zamboanga, these 
cities also having a larger share of doctors than the surrounding 
country. The result of this disproportionate distribution is that, 
according to figures furnished by the Census Bureau, in many 
of our towns the number of those that died with any medical 
assistance at all barely reaches 8.4, and in some it is even as low 
as 3 per cent. 
In order that the population of the Philippines may have a pro- 
portional number of physicians there should be a practicing 
physician for every 3,000 inhabitants, and a sanitary officer for 
every community of 10,000; in other words, the country is in 
need of not less than 3,609 clinicians and 1,082 sanitarians, a 
total of 4,691 instead of the 969 that can be depended on at 
present. Medicine as a profession is evidently not very attrac- 
tive to our young men. 
The disproportion is even more striking in the case of nurses, 
the records of the Board of Examiners for Nurses giving 
only 672 registered nurses, which would allow a nurse to every 
16,114 inhabitants. It must be remembered, however, that nurs- 
ing is a comparatively new calling in this country, the first grad- 
uate nurses having received their diplomas only nine years ago, 
