How refreshing it was to read Michael Henry Ll. Yusingco’s commentary (Opinion, 5/23/15) on the implementation of the Local Government Code of 1991, specifically citing the devolved healthcare service delivery functions as “the marked failure of this law and… such unfortunate outcome can also be seen not just in the current sorry state of public healthcare but also in the delivery of other vital services such as public transportation, traffic administration, solid waste management, and disaster risk management.”
During the last two years, Nurses’ Initiatives for Change has actively advocated for a review and the reformation of the present healthcare system in the country (Opinion, 1/12/14). The number and quality of local health services have badly declined and people are complaining about not only the lack of medicines but also the lack of professional healthcare workers to look after their needs. The Department of Health launches an “all-out” campaign only when a particular illness (or threat thereof), whether communicable or noncommunicable—e.g., measles, hypertension, HIV, Ebola—registers an unusually or alarmingly high incidence here or abroad. But such illnesses are not the only ones that need to be addressed. Behavioral problems of the young, like suicides and teenage pregnancies should also be the concern of a healthcare system. The government’s failure to achieve the millennium health goals, especially in reducing maternal deaths, can be remedied in part through preventive healthcare practices and by intensifying health activities especially at local levels.
Career structures for public health specialists, for both nurses and physicians, have almost disappeared. The basic task of public health professionals is to deliver primary healthcare services and educate communities to promote health and prevent both communicable and noncommunicable diseases. But our health system has without question lost its direction. Gone are the glorious decades (1960-1980 when the DOH gave priority to the delivery of primary healthcare services in far-flung areas in answer to the World Health Organization’s “Health for All through Primary Health Care.”
Lawmakers and politicians, please take heed and work on the reforms needed by the existing healthcare system of our country. Be “men for others.” The government’s Universal Health Care program emphasizes only membership in the PhilHealth and curative healthcare. Besides, PhilHealth pays only an “insignificant’” part of a patient’s hospital bills.
—A. MANGAY-MAGLACAS, Nurses’ Initiatives for Change, amelia_maglacas@yahoo.com.ph