The Philippine government plays an increasingly significant role in the provision of drugs and medicines. Over the last half decade, direct public procurement more than doubled from PHP 7.8 billion in 2014 to PHP 20.1 billion in 2019. In this study, we document government procurement practices...

This study provides a systematic review and summary of the extant knowledge on the impacts of decentralization on health in the Philippines. Despite the country's twenty-five years of experience in decentralization, little is known about the topic. Overall, our survey shows that the existing...

The Philippine national government, through the Department of Health (DOH), has a long tradition of augmenting the supply of healthcare workers in underserved areas. Even with the adoption of the Local Government Code in 1991, which shifts the mandate of DOH from being the sole provider of...

Despite the long tradition of decentralization in health care worldwide, there remains limited evidences on its impact on health outcomes. In this paper, we investigate how the expansion of local government incomes in the Philippines influences household demand for healthcare under a...

The novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic that has infected at least 1.2 million people and caused more than 67,000 deaths worldwide. The Philippines has recorded 3,764 confirmed cases and 177 deaths as of April 7, 2020 and has implemented an enhanced Luzon-wide enhanced...

Health human resource (HHR) is critical in the delivery of health care services. However, the available evidences on their geographic distribution and availability remains quite limited in the scope of cadres studied, i.e., mostly physicians, and in global reach, i.e., mainly in English-speaking...

The Philippines has been experiencing unprecedented economic growth in recent years. This has fueled greater consumption among households, and greater support for the expansion of government entitlements, particularly on health and education. Behind these developments, however, is the fact that...