MANILA: The death toll from a tropical storm in the southern Philippines climbed swiftly to 133 on Saturday, as rescuers pulled dozens of bodies from a swollen river, police said.
Tropical Storm Tembin has lashed the nation's second largest island of Mindanao since Friday, triggering flash floods and mudslides.
Rescuers retrieved 36 bodies from the Salog river in Mindanao on Saturday, as officials reported more fatalities in the impoverished Zamboanga peninsula.
“The river rose and most of the homes were swept away. The village is no longer there,” Tubod police officer Gerry Parami told AFP by telephone.
“The houses were toppled by mud and logs and only the stumps of a few concrete homes are left,” Parami said.
Police, soldiers and volunteers were digging through the rubble of Dalama, a farming village of about 2,000 people, using shovels in search of more bodies, he added.
Four others were killed in nearby towns and cities, police said, while seven people perished in Lanao del Sur province according to civil defense officials there.
Four people were listed as missing after being buried in landslides or being swept away by floodwaters, while more than 12,000 have fled their homes.
The Philippines is pummelled by 20 major storms each year on average, many of them deadly. But Mindanao, home to 20 million people, is rarely hit by these cyclones.
After slicing across Mindanao on Friday, Tembin sped west over the Sulu Sea with gusts of 95 kilometers an hour.
It was forecast to smash into the tip of the western island of Palawan late Saturday, the state weather service said.
Tembin struck less than a week after Tropical Storm Kai-Tak devastated the central Philippines, leaving 54 dead and 24 missing.
The deadliest typhoon to hit the country was Haiyan, which left 7,350 people dead and destroyed entire towns in heavily populated areas of the central Philippines in November 2013.
Philippines storm death toll rises to 133, many missing
Philippines storm death toll rises to 133, many missing
South Korea will boost medical school admissions to tackle physician shortage
- Jeong said all of the additional students will be trained through regional physician programs
SEOUL: South Korea plans to increase medical school admissions by more than 3,340 students from 2027 to 2031 to address concerns about physician shortages in one of the fastest-aging countries in the world, the government said Tuesday.
The decision was announced months after officials defused a prolonged doctors’ strike by backing away from a more ambitious increase pursued by Seoul’s former conservative government. Even the scaled-down plan drew criticism from the country’s doctors’ lobby, which said the move was “devoid of rational judgment.”
Kwak Soon-hun, a senior Health Ministry official, said that the president of the Korean Medical Association attended the healthcare policy meeting but left early to boycott the vote confirming the size of the admission increases.
The KMA president, Kim Taek-woo, later said the increases would overwhelm medical schools when combined with students returning from strikes or mandatory military service, and warned that the government would be “fully responsible for all confusion that emerges in the medical sector going forward.” The group didn’t immediately signal plans for further walkouts.
Health Minister Jeong Eun Kyeong said the annual medical school admissions cap will increase from the current 3,058 to 3,548 in 2027, with further hikes planned in subsequent years to reach 3,871 by 2031. This represents an average increase of 668 students per year over the five-year period, far smaller than the 2,000-per-year hike initially proposed by the government of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, which sparked the months long strike by thousands of doctors.
Jeong said all of the additional students will be trained through regional physician programs, which aim to increase the number of doctors in small towns and rural areas that have been hit hardest by demographic pressures. The specific admissions quota for each medical school will be finalized in April.
