NEW Health Secretary Dr. Teodoro Herbosa yesterday said he will focus on addressing problems brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing number of Filipinos afflicted with tuberculosis and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Herbosa said this was the marching order of President Marcos Jr. who, he said, wants a COVID “exit plan.” He said the President also asked why the Philippines is still in the top 10 countries with high tuberculosis cases and why many youths are getting infected with HIV.
Herbosa said he had immediately created action officers to come up with plans on how to address the challenges raised by the President.
In March this year, DOH officer in charge Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said around 70 million Filipinos die daily from tuberculosis, and the the Philippines is the fourth largest contributor of TB cases, at 7% of the global total.
TB incidence is predicted to increase by as much as 130 percent and deaths by 170 percent by 2025 if measures to stamp out the disease are not fully put in place.
As to HIV, the United Nation Children’s Fund said the Philippines recorded a 78 percent hike in HIV-AIDS cases among teenagers ages 15 to 17 years old from 2019 to 2023.
A total of 110,736 HIV cases have been recorded nationwide with 6,383 reported deaths since 1984 when the first such case was reported.
APPOINTMENTS
Herbosa said he appointed Vergeire as “chief of all the undersecretaries” in the department and Undersecretary Eric Tayag as chief information officer or spokesperson.
Speaking over ABS-CBN News Channel, Herbosa said Vergeire will oversee all undersecretaries in charge of operation.
“I gave her a position of chief of all the undersecretaries that are in charge of our operations of all the different regions, because we have four undersecretaries taking care of the DOH activities and programs in Northern Luzon, Central Luzon, Southern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao,” he said.
He said Vergeire will be of great help to him in implementing his goals as DOH chief.
Herbosa said Vergeire’s caretaking skills will also be one of her assets in overseeing all the undersecretaries in charge of the DOH’s operations in the said regions.
Vergeire served as DOH OIC for close to a year before Marcos appointed Herbosa to the post.
On Tayag, Herbosa said Tayag’s tenure as the chief of the DOH Knowledge Management and Information Service Technology from 2016 to 2022 will also do the department good as he added that the digitalization of the DOH’s is also one of his priorities.
He explained that the digitalization of DOH is one of his medium-term goals, specifically, to digitize how it delivers healthcare, how the budget is spent, and how DOH operations are monitored.
VACCINES
Herbosa said the DOH will acquire more bivalent COVID-19 vaccines.
A shipment of 390,000 doses of donated bivalent vaccines arrived recently from Lithuania.
“We have a program to acquire as many of the bivalent vaccines. The 390,000 is not enough,” Herbosa said.
Bivalent vaccines provide more protection against the original COVID-19 virus, SARS-CoV-2, and Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.
NURSING GRADS
Herbosa said the DOH is mulling the hiring of unlicensed nursing graduates to work in government hospitals to address the exodus of health workers seeking greener pastures abroad.
He said he would consult the Professional Regulation Commission to ensure his plan is legally feasible.
He said the unlicensed nursing graduates will be considered if they diplomas from accredited medical schools.
“We have several nurses that did not pass the board examination and who don’t have a license. In government, you cannot work without a license, but I am willing to take them if they have a diploma,” Herbosa told ABS-CBN News Channel.
“I’ll make it eligible. If you have a diploma in an accredited school, I will give you a period of time to pass it. You make them work for five years, I’m giving you five years to pass the board exam,” he added.
If hired, he said they could earn a starting monthly salary ranging from P35,000 to P40,000.
Herbosa stressed that while he understands the reason for Filipino nurses leaving the country, their concern about better salaries and other benefits should be addressed so that they will just stay in the country.
“If a nurse wants to go abroad to get a salary that I cannot give, I shouldn’t stop that person because what I should look at is why I cannot pay the same amount so they could be here in their own country,”he added.
Earlier, the Commission on Higher Education unveiled measures that it said would help address the shortage of nurses in the country.
CHED chairperson Prospero De Vera has proposed a nursing curriculum that will offer its graduates early exit credentials after just a year or two years of studies. He said this stop-gap measure is part of the medium-term plan of CHED to address the nursing shortage.
Data provided by CHED last March showed that 175,900 nurses are working in private and public health facilities in the country, 3,905 in other practices such as health administration, 121,688 in unspecified practice, and 316,405 are permanent and temporary migrant health workers, for a total of 617,898 of licensed nurses.
Meanwhile, the top 10 countries of destination for Filipino nurses are Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, UAE, Qatar, Ireland, Finland, Taiwan and Kuwait.
De Vera said this migration had contributed to the high turnover rate of trained nurses in many hospitals in the country.
The data also showed there is a 126,044 gap to meet the number of required nurses as benchmarked by the World Health Organization.
APOLOGY
Herbosa apologized for some things he has said as he sought to rally the support of the public for the DOH. He did not specify but he has been criticized over some tweets, including one that reacted to a death in the conduct of a community pantry and another on protesting health workers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, Herbosa was called out after he shared a Facebook post containing screenshot of an anecdote of a father teaching his son about the distinctions between rape, romance and marriage. At the time, he was serving as executive vice president of the University of the Philippines System.
In the same year, he also stirred another controversy when he referred to the protest actions against the perceived mistreatment by the government of detained human rights activists Reina Mae Nasino whose months-old baby died while she was under detention, as part of “cadaver politics.’
He also said the government should not be blamed for the death of Nasino’s baby.
The following year, he again courted controversy when he referred to “death by community pantry,” in the case of an elderly man who collapsed and later died while queuing at the community pantry organized by actress Angel Locsin in Quezon City.
He was also met with indignation after he acknowledged the sacrifices of health care workers in 2021 “except for those who protested.”
