Garin’s ‘unhealthy’ stint at DOH
JANETTE Garin will go down in history as the worst health secretary the country has ever had. She put at risk the lives of millions of senior citizens by hijacking their health funds, and exposed to a dangerous vaccine hundreds of thousands of innocent school children.
Last March 27, the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) filed a graft case against its former nominal boss, Garin, as well as exPhilhealth president Alexander Padilla for the alleged diversion of 110.6 billion that should have been used to pay for the health benefits of senior citizens.
Instead, the funds were allegedly used by Garin for the construction of rural health clinics all over the country, which was seen as a political move to bolster the electoral candidates of the former Aquino administration. (Or was it a fund-raising activity? The Justice department should seriously look into this.)
Both Garin and Padilla denied the charges against them. However, Philhealth was adamant in saying that the reallocation of the senior citizens fund was “not sanctioned or approved” by the health agency’s board of directors.
It also blamed the two former officials for the current precarious financial state of PhilHealth, the country’s sole health fund that is charge of implementing the national health insurance program for all Filipino citizens.
Worse, the planned 3,200 rural health centers, the raison d’etre for raiding the seniors funds, turned out to be a massive ghost project with only 217 having certificates of completion. So to whose pocket did the bulk of the 110.6 billion go?
A recent joint congressional hearing revealed Philhealth’s losses for 2017 at between 14 and 19 billion due to financial mismanagement by officials in the previous administration, including the hijacking of funds for partisan political undertakings.
Lawmakers during the hearing suspected that the funds were diverted for the electoral campaign of Liberal Party candidates in the 2016 elections due to timing of their release.
Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito, who chaired the joint congressional oversight panel, described the diversion of the PhilHealth fund as “heartless and insensitive to the condition of our senior citizens.” He also described it as “heinous act” that is more cruel than the Dengvaxia fiasco.
I don’t think one can label one as crueler than the other because both are horrible acts by a public official who is supposed to have been in charge of the health and welfare of Filipinos. I don’t know how Garin can look at herself in the mirror after being implicated in these two scandalous undertakings, which frankly reeks of graft and corruption.
In the Dengvaxia scandal, Garin presided over the mass vaccination for dengue of around 800,000 public school children just a month before the May, 2016, elections. She used 13.5 billion in public funds – sourced from all over, because this wasn’t a Congress-approved program – to buy this expensive Dengvaxia for an illness that isn’t even in the top 10 list of killer diseases, and for which mass fumigation has been proven to be a more effective deterrent than the unproven vaccine.
Garin ignored all warnings by specialists and medical experts, both local and foreign, not to undertake a mass vaccination program given the danger to public health. It bears repeating: she ignored the warnings and the risks. Politics apparently is more important to Garin than the possible harm and injury her policy decisions may have on public school children.
Later on, Sanofi-Pasteur, the manufacturer of the vaccine itself, would say that Dengvaxia shouldn’t be given to children who hadn’t had the viral disease, otherwise when they get infected, they could get dengue’s killer version.
The Yellow Cultists are currently up in arms over President Duterte’s common-consent, no malice kiss with a lady Overseas Filipino Worker in South Korea, but they are shockingly silent over Garin’s incompetence and other irresponsible acts which has her now facing criminal liability.
Which deserves more public censure — putting at risk the lives of innocent children by giving them a flawed vaccine or having a fun moment with OFWs in South Korea? Which deserves jail time — hijacking funds meant for senior citizen or planting a quick peck on the lips of an adult and willing supporter? (The OFW, Bea Kim, in a videotape interview urged everyone not to put malice into the kiss and said it was nothing, it was “kilig” or theatrics for the crowd. It’s Filipino humor that uptight folks will never ever get.)
More media space should be given for the attempt of the previous administration to cover up their failings and criminal liabilities than for Duterte’s kissing a supporter. This is the time for editors and reporters to rethink their politics, and ask themselves whether they are letting certain people get away with murder.
Garin, for instance, has been very voluble and you have to hand it to her, she’s very articulate. But her silver tongue aside, she still has to answer for the diversion of the senior citizens funds as well as the horrifically brutal Dengvaxia vaccination program.