PBBM makes health care centres all over the country better

DSG | PBBM makes health care centres all over the country better | MANILA – President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has made it a top priority to improve and build more health facilities across the country.

“There are changes being made to the structure of our health care system. Marcos said in his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday that more than 3,400 projects were finished last year.

He said that specialty centres in different fields are being set up and added to government hospitals. So far, about 60 of these centres have opened their doors to the public to improve access to specialised medical care.

The Clark Multi Specialty Medical Centre (CMSMC) in Pampanga, which started building this month, is one of these.

The CMSMC has state-of-the-art facilities and a wide range of specialised areas, such as heart, kidney, cancer, and paediatric centres, to give its patients the best medical care possible.

The CMSMC is the result of a relationship between the Department of Health, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, the Clark Development Corporation, local governments in Pampanga, and private organisations like the Bloomberry Cultural Foundation Inc.

The Department of Health (DOH) sees the CMSMC as a pioneering change agent for creating specialised medical centres across the country because it makes advanced medical services easier to get to.

Also, people from Central Luzon who need interventional cardiac treatments or non-cardiac procedures (both vascular and non-vascular) under interventional radiology no longer have to go to Manila.

This happened after the Jose B. Lingad Memorial General Hospital in San Fernando, Pampanga, opened a new Catheterization Laboratory (CathLab) on March 24.

It was built with help from the Health Facilities Enhancement Programme and province and local governments working together.

The PHP1 billion budget that was given to the hospital in 2013 to finish its tools and buildings was used to pay for the construction fund.

It was finished in 120 days, so it can help with all diseases right away for people in the area.

Last March 10, the President signed Executive Order No. 19, series of 2023, which called for the Philippine Heart Centre Annex to be built at the Clark Freeport Zone. This was done so that all Filipinos could get specialised medical care.

On June 22, this year, the Cancer Institute and Oxygen Generating Plant of Cotabato Regional and Medical Centre were also opened.

The oxygen plant’s goal is to make sure that local hospitals have enough medical oxygen, which has become very expensive since the Covid-19 plague began.

As of now, the DOH is in charge of 46 specialty centres and 26 hospitals all over the country.

The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation also backs the Marcos government as it works to get services to people in a more direct and efficient way.

In the Improved Konsulta Package from PhilHealth, about 21 kinds of drugs and 13 lab services will be given away for free. There are now more than 2,000 Konsulta centres in the United States, which is a 35 percent rise from last year.

PhilHealth has increased the number of free dialysis sessions from 90 last year to 156 this year. This is to help people with kidney disease more.

The price of important and main medicines has gone down by 40%, while the price of other medicines has gone down by 90%.

“In addition to the maximum retail price regulation, 59 essential medications, such as those for cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and mental illness, had their prices lowered by strategic VAT exemption,” Marcos said.

More than 93% of Filipinos are already members of PhilHealth. This is because the government keeps pushing for free health care for everyone.

Through the DOH’s Medical Assistance for Indigent Patients programme, more than 3.4 million poor Filipinos got help from the government in the past year.

The Marcos government is also interested in taking steps to improve the lives of doctors, nurses, and other medical front-line workers.

“To make up for the sacrifices our health workers made in private and public hospitals during the pandemic, their COVID health emergency allowance and other benefits will be given to them,” Marcos said.

Four bills to change the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers have already been introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The DOH version of the said bill includes ongoing staff work and the standardisation of salaries for health human resources.

Nutrition, programmes for feeding

“We are now changing our health goals based on what we have learned from the pandemic and how it has shown us where we are weak. “Our goal is to make communities and ways of life healthier,” Marcos said.

The Marcos government has also started programmes that work together to deal with hunger and diet problems, especially among children, such as stunting and wasting.

The government started a pilot programme called the Food Stamp Programme (FSP), which aims to meet the nutritional needs of a million of the most food-poor Filipinos. This programme is meant to work with other nutrition programmes, such as the First 1,000 Days initiative, which makes sure that children are fed for the first three years of their lives.

The programme gives extra food to children who go to babysitting centres. The K-to-6 Programme will feed public school kids in Kindergarten through Grade 6 who are very hungry.

Shots for everyone

“We’re getting our kids up to date on their regular shots. “Measles, rubella, and polio vaccines have been given to more than 80% of our eligible children as of this year,” Marcos said.

“I’m telling all parents to finish vaccinating their children and go to the nearest health centre for free vaccines.”

The DOH’s MRV-OPV extra immunisation activity or Chikiting Ligtas, which ran from May 1 to June 15, has vaccinated 8,016,954 children against measles and rubella as of June 8. This is 82.61 percent of the target children.

About 2,307,564 children, or 80.5%, got bivalent oral polio shots, and 3,884,629 children got vitamin A supplements.

The Marcos administration also kept giving out coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) booster shots to people who were already fully protected.

From December 5 to 7, 2022, the Bakunahang Bayan II: Special Covid-19 Vaccination Days were held by the Public Health Operations Centres. An average of 36,693 booster shots and 8,727 main shots were given to children ages 5 to 11.

The DOH began giving the bivalent Covid-19 vaccines to 500 health care workers on June 21 at the Philippine Heart Centre in Quezon City.

On June 3, the government of Lithuania sent the country 391,860 doses of Comirnaty Pfizer-BioNtech-adapted bivalent vaccines.

All of the DOH-Centers for Health Development and the Ministry of Health in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao were given amounts. (via PNA)