Provide more money, attention to health care

Last February, the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act, which is expected to shift the health system’s current treatment-oriented approach toward a more balanced approach emphasizing prevention and health promotion, was finally enacted. This law aims to provide a “full range of high-quality services at affordable cost.”

However, just this September, the House of Representatives approved the P88-billion budget of the Department of Health for 2020, and it is P10 billion less than this year’s P98.6-billion budget.

Ironically, this budget cut opposes one of the UHC reforms — to respond to the gap in health workers throughout the country, as this budget cut will lead to more or less 7,000 healthcare workers (a majority of them nurses) losing their jobs.

This year alone, the Philippines has faced various concerns in the health sector: measles and dengue outbreak; polio epidemic; the drop in antimeasles immunization rate from 95 percent to 40 percent.

Adequate and thorough solutions were obviously not forthcoming considering the current budget of the sector. But what more if the allocation is cut further, knowing that the population is steadily increasing, while the number of health care workers is decreasing and the overall public health situation is problematic?

The puzzle pieces don’t fit very well.

This problem about our health care system should be addressed in a way that we do not deprive our citizens of the care and rights they deserve. Health is a human right. What the government is doing with the budget isn’t helping improve the situation, or at least ease it.

There are already issues with poor health care facilities, doctor-patient ratio and expensive hospital fees, and I’m worried that the situation will get even worse once the proposed budget for the health sector becomes final.

Nowadays, health care seems to have become a privilege when it is a human right. The government must allocate more money and pay more attention to health care. Filipinos deserve better.

RUTH ANN O. MALANUM,
[email protected]