We need our own Medical Reserve Corps
The COVID-19 pandemic took the whole world by surprise. In just a span of a few months, the health crisis altered the way we live and will continue to influence the way we move forward in the foreseeable future.
It has been more than six months since we started our strict lockdown measures. Indeed, it has been a tough fight for the whole country, especially for our medical professionals who are at the frontlines of this battle. While we continue to handle this crisis with a whole-of-society approach, we learn lessons on where our country lacks in resources and where we need to improve our response to this health threat.
As senator and chair of the Senate Committee on Health and Demography, it is my duty to push for and deliberate legislative measures that will improve the well-being of our fellow Filipinos. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that our country of more than 100 million Filipinos needs proper and sufficient health care facilities to cater to all their medical concerns.
As a senator, I have authored and filed laws that aim to improve our health infrastructure by increasing the bed capacity of our government hospitals, creating numerous quarantine facilities and testing laboratories, and establishing different health units across the country to enhance our capabilities in epidemiology and disease surveillance.
In this 18th Congress, through the concerted efforts of my fellow legislators, we have also passed several health-related measures which were eventually signed into law, such as the Malasakit Centers Act; the bill increasing the salaries of our civil servants, including our government doctors, nurses and other allied professionals; and the bill increasing the hospital bed and service capabilities of several government hospitals scattered around the country.
While I am glad that we are making good strides on this aspect, there remains
another gap that needs to be addressed — and that is the low number of the country’s medical personnel. Our medical professionals can only handle so much during a health crisis. I have personally seen how exhausted and affected they are during this pandemic. In order to help them, we need to increase our medical human resource. President Duterte himself has acknowledged this and deemed this an urgent matter in his latest State of the Nation Address.
This is why I reiterate my call for the swift passage of Senate Bill 1451, or the Medical Reserve Corps Act of 2020, which aims to mobilize a medical reserve corps to complement the existing health force and support emergency response efforts during a crisis.
The Medical Reserve Corps Act of 2020 gives the Secretary of Health the authority to mobilize, in coordination
with the Secretaries of the Departments of National Defense, Education and Interior and Local Government, persons with degrees in medicine, nursing, medical technology and other health-related fields who have yet to obtain their licenses. Of course, they will be duly compensated once they are called for duty.
It is a grim reality that our medical personnel are already strained by the number of COVID-19 patients. This, in turn, hinders our overall capacity to combat other diseases immediately and effectively. This also leads to the delayed treatment of our fellow Filipinos who are suffering from other ailments. We believe the additional support provided by a medical reserve corps will be of great help to our limited health care system.
We are in close coordination with our fellow civil servants from different agencies, especially the Department of Health (DoH), in ensuring that this law comes to fruition. In fact, Director Gloria Balboa of the DoH’s Emergency Management Bureau said this measure would complement the minimum population-based health service components of the province or city-wide health systems.
My fellow Filipinos, we have to accept the possibility that COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic to hit our shores. We have to prepare ourselves in the long run, so we can mitigate the ill effects of a global health crisis and other types of national emergencies.
I believe that this will be a good opportunity for our people, especially those in the health care sector, to provide invaluable service to their fellow Filipinos. This is one way of giving back to our country.
COVID-19 has taught us crucial lessons on being proactive. Let us use this crisis as an opportunity to better ourselves as a country. As I have mentioned always: Magbayanihan po tayo at patuloy na magmalasakit sa kapwa! Sama-sama nating iahon ang kabuhayan ng bawat Pilipino. (Let us come together and show our support. Let us join hands in raising the livelihood of every Filipino.) I am sure we will overcome this crisis if we are all in this together.
“COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that our country of more than 100 million Filipinos needs proper and sufficient health care facilities to cater to all their medical concerns
“I believe that this will be a good opportunity for our people, especially those in the health care sector, to provide invaluable service to their fellow Filipinos.