Universal healthcare pushed in dev’t plan
The Department of Health (DOH) vows to strengthen the implementation of the universal healthcare, in accordance with the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) for 2023-2028.
Just recently, the PDP 2023-2028 was signed to augment the country’s economic development and social transformation.
“The vision of the plan gives emphasis on to vital components included in the Health Sector Strategy, highlighting four major pillars of the framework - (1) a society that promotes physical, mental, and social wellbeing, (2) empowering communities and households to make healthy and informed choices, (3) giving access to both public and private health care delivery systems, and (4) capacitating measures to bolster the health system in support of other outcomes,” read the DOH statement.
Along with this, DOH now aims to achieve four major strategic outcomes - improving the social determinants of health, enabling healthy choices and behavior, improving the Filipinos’ access to quality and efficient health care, and strengthening the country’s health systems.
“Eventually all of (our strategies) would contribute to realizing the goals of the Universal Health Care Act for everybody and this is the priority and primary goal of the Department of Health in the years to come — through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach,” said Department of Health (DOH), through Officer-in-Charge, Dr. Maria Rosario Singh-Vergeire.
4Ps in Cebu
Meanwhile, Cebu Province has the highest number of new beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in Central Visayas, as the Department of Social Welfare and Development-7 targeted to register a total of 90,242 new beneficiaries under this program.
The new 4Ps beneficiaries are replacements for those beneficiaries who graduated or exited from the program who were already at the self-sufficient level, 4Ps households with children who have finished their senior high school studies and have no monitored eligible children.
Cebu province has the highest number of new beneficiaries with 40,817, followed by Negros Oriental with 31,625, Bohol with 16,971, and Siquijor with 829.
The posting of the master list of potential 4Ps beneficiaries will commence this February, and it will be posted in conspicuous spaces like barangay, city, and municipal halls.
“We encourage the public to help us validate the master list to ensure that only eligible and deserving households become part of the program. After we post the master list in each area, the validation process will follow, which will be done through a community assembly or a house-to-house visit by our 4Ps staff," said DSWD-7 Regional Director Shalaine Marie Lucero in a statement.
She added that the agency will install a grievance help desk during the 4Ps registration to receive complaints from the potential beneficiaries and the public.
The 4Ps is the government’s major poverty alleviation program that invests in the health, nutrition, and education of poor, eligible households. —