‘Duterte and Duque will be saying goodbye at a time when the Department of Health and private health practitioners are still struggling with vaccine booster coverage.’
AT last, the health secretary who had been at the receiving end of criticisms, brickbats, insults and incessant calls for his resignation due to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, is bidding the Department of Health (DOH) goodbye to return to the private sector. Also leaving the highest office of the land is his boss and No. 1 defender, President Rodrigo Duterte.
Up to the very last, Duterte has been talking about how the nation successfully fought the pandemic, and of course, if it was deemed a success by the President, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has much to do with it.
Duque himself may be seen as currying favor with the incoming Marcos administration by presenting a transition plan that spoon-feeds the new President on what to do about the health situation. Duque said there are three major challenges that the new administration will face: building on the gains of the Duterte administration in terms of its pandemic response, inadequate primary health care services nationwide, and implementation of the universal health care system.
Duterte and Duque will be saying goodbye at a time when the Department of Health and private health practitioners are still struggling with vaccine booster coverage. Duque is, however, right in pointing out that this would be another challenge to the next administration, since the improvement in tempering COVID-19 transmission was due to the nationwide vaccination drive, and boosters are just an extension of this campaign.
At a breakfast forum, the outgoing health secretary assessed the situation on booster shots, thus: “I will be the first one to admit that we’re struggling with the booster. But we have not given up, and the next administration will see the wisdom of what we have done in DOH, particularly in improving access to the booster dose for our people.”
Even as Secretary Duque gave the assurance that his department has “expanded access to our vaccines for booster coverage,” he believes this is not enough because health services of local government units still encounter opposition from non-believers of vaccination.
While Duterte and Duque may gloat about the Philippines’ increased ranking in Nikkei Asia’s latest COVID-19 Recovery Index, where the country climbed to the 33rd spot among 120 nations, the real situation should be assessed in our public and private hospitals, especially the big ones like the Philippine General Hospital, and not some survey group abroad. Remember that the same Nikkei Asia downgraded the country at a time when we notched a marked improvement in COVID-19 infection rate.
