Alliance of Health Workers-Iloilo and Filipino Nurses United-Iloilo Chapter strongly oppose the re-deployment of 40 Doctors to the Barrios (DTTBs) from Region VI and VII as per Memorandum issued by DOH on June 26, 2020 to re-deploy DTTB physicians from their current rural health unit assignment to unspecified private hospitals in Cebu City as part of COVID-19 Response.
“While it is true that the place of heroes are in the battlefields”, these heroes do not need to leave their very scarce resources. Such as doctors to render services in private hospitals, while they are also much needed by the poor population to render the basic medical/health services in the municipalities they are assigned in. The function of the doctors to the barrios (DTTBs) are preventive in nature. While they have taken their Hippocratic Oath, these DTTBs are already assigned to LGUs where they presently serve. Leaving their LGU assignments may only give rise to restrictions in the basic health care needs of their residents. Going on duty in private hospitals exposes them to COVID-19 and upon their return to their LGUs may bring with them the much-dreaded coronavirus.
Reassigning them from geographically isolated and depressed areas in the region to Cebu City is not the solution. Especially today that COVID cases gradually increases in Iloilo. Also, rainy season already started and illnesses such as dengue fever, respiratory diseases, Leptospirosis apart from other common diseases like cardiovascular, diabetes and kidney problems are expected to rise. Hundreds of thousands of people will again have no access to a doctor in the low income, remote catchment areas left behind by the 40 DTTBs. Even if the deployment is temporary as alleged by the regional DOH, this move will again deprive these GIDA barangays of a medical doctor for at least 4- 6 weeks at a time.
Instead of pulling out these DTTB physicians from their GIDA assignments, the DOH and the private hospitals can hire more physicians and fill up the vacant plantilla positions to be able to augment the health personnel in the hospitals
attending to the COVID 19 patients. We need to ask, whatever happened to the much-touted recruitment of additional health personnel for the Bayanihan Heal As One act? Why not deploy these personnel who are specially designated and presumably adequately trained for the COVID-19 response?
We therefore strongly support the desistance of this 40 DTTBs against redeployment to Cebu and allow them to serve in the GIDA areas they were assigned. These young doctors have made the laudable decision to stay in the rural areas of the country and serve fellow Filipinos as an expression of their adherence to the Hippocratic oath and patriotic sentiments. To become a Licensed Medical Doctor is not an easy and simple profession. They are not like soldiers that “Obey before you complain”. Let us give them due respect and gratitude and allow them to continue providing health services to their respective communities.
Reference:
Ruth Alinsangao
Coordinator- AHW Iloilo
Zanita Glenda Plaga, RN, MAT, PhD
President- FNU Iloilo Chapter
