HEALTH Secretary Enrique Ona is supporting the appeal of two concerned groups to release the 43 community health workers or the Morong 43, whom the military tagged as alleged members of the New People’s Army (NPA). According to Ona he will continue the call of former Secretary Esperanza Cabral, the Alliance of Health Workers and Health Alliance for Democracy to free the Morong 43.
“The release of the 43 health workers illegally detained is needed immediately,” said Dr. Geneve Rivera, secretary general of Health Alliance for Democracy.
She added that the call for their release is for humanitarian reasons.
“They [the health workers] were detained illegally,” she said.
According to her it is very important to free the health workers, especially the two pregnant and the sick detainees.
The community health workers were arrested in February, in Morong, Rizal.
Health sector issues
Meanwhile, both representatives of alliances raised the following issues with the Health secretary: to provide an adequate health budget; immediately increase the national budget for health to P90 billion; provide free health services for the poor and provide free essential medicines in rural health centers.
They also clamored for the increased salary of health workers; full implementation of health workers’ benefits; adequate number of health professionals (like doctors, nurses, midwives and dentists) to far-flung areas nationwide and the dismissal of abusive, corrupt and over-staying government hospital directors.
The groups are also against to the privatization or commercialization of government hospitals.
“I’m very familiar with all these things. I am not new in the DOH [Department of Health]. I’m here to make sure we understand each other. I hope you understand that I support the issues you’ve raised to the best of my ability,” Ona told the alliances.
Ona, before accepting President Benigno Aquino 3rd’s offer to become Health secretary, is a surgeon and director of the National Kidney Transplant Institute.
“I wish we can get P90 billion [budget]. Since it was P24 billion last year, our target is to get P60 billion,” said Ona.
Access to healthcare
The secretary added that they could help the poor to get access to healthcare through the automatic enrolment of some 25 million indigent Filipinos in the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., or PhilHealth.
“I also think it’s very necessary that we differentiate Filipinos who can afford to pay P100 a month because the government cannot afford to offer all basic services for free,” he said, adding “that’s why we have a system like PhilHealth.”
Ona also asked the health workers to be practical and understand that public hospitals could not rely only on government financing. Ona assured the health workers that government hospitals would not be privatized or commercialized.
He said that the department would also observe the zero-based budgeting principle where the past years budget allocations would not be automatically adopted.
“That is our dream, to provide free health care services to all,” he said, adding, “But we have to look at our capacity given that the health sector has not been given that much budget in past years.”
He added that he understood the lack of health professionals in the far-flung areas and the insufficient salaries and benefits given to public health workers.
And for the corrupt public hospitals officials Ona said that the complaints have to go through the legal process. –JOVEE MARIE N. DELA CRUZ, Manila Times
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