DoH exec drops FL’s name in case vs Vergeire
AN official of the Department of Health said on Sunday that a colleague has dropped the name of first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos to convince him to withdraw the graft complaint he filed against acting DoH Secretary Ma. Rosario Vergeire and six other Health officials.
Medical officer 4 Dr. Clarito Cairo Jr., DoH’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program project manager, filed last week an amended information before the Office of the Ombudsman to include Vergeire in the earlier malversation and graft cases he filed against Health Assistant Secretary Beverly Lorraine Ho, former director 4 Anna Melissa Guerrero, Directors 4 Razel Nikka Hao and Anthony Cu, Disease Prevention and Control Bureau-Financial and Supply Chain Monitoring Division chief Kim Patrick Tejano, and Cancer Control Division head Jan Aura Laurelle Llevado.
In an exclusive interview with The Manila Times, Cairo said the complaint stemmed from the alleged mismanagement of P786 million funding for the Cancer and Supportive-Palliative Medicine Access Program (CSPMAP) and another P529 million for the Cancer Assistance Fund.
He said he believed the senior Health officials conspired over the multimillion-peso funds for the cancer program.
“What they did was highly disadvantageous to the government and grave disservice, especially to many CSPMAP-enrolled patients,” said Cairo, a former president of the DoH employees’ union.
He said the department official, which he did not identify by name, is a member of the Cancer Control Council.
The official tried to persuade him to withdraw the complaint and dropped the name of the wife of the President.
“The council member said the first lady is his patient and that he also has connections at the Ombudsman, and that Asec (assistant secretary) Ho couldn’t do it because she is still ‘young’ at the department,” Cairo said.
He said he included Vergeire in the case because of “significant developments and the emergence of breakthrough evidence.”“What I was expecting from her (Vergeire) was to say that ‘Let the Ombudsman decide on the case,’ but instead she was all-out defending them (the six respondents) while saying that the suballotment of the cancer funds was aboveboard,” Cairo, who has been with the DoH since 2012, said.
He said that even before she became DoH’s officer in charge, Vergeire already had full control of the cancer funds, being the undersecretary for public health services team which supervises the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau.
Cairo said he started to suspect something was amiss when he was “unceremoniously” removed in November 2021 from the technical working group (TWG) that was involved in the annual procurement of cancer medicines.
“I should have been part of TWG for procurement because I have the technical know-how and more importantly, the necessary experience on the budget impact and cost-effectiveness of the cancer medicines,” he said in his complaint.
He objected to the respondents’ move to prevent him from participating in the procurement of cancer medicines by sending memoranda to them, “but all fell on deaf ears.”
He said he became more suspicious after the respondents suballotted the funding last year to fewer hospitals and purchased supposedly more expensive medicines for cancer patients.
Cairo said that when the respondents moved to suballot the CSPMAP funds to only 20 hospitals, cancer patients enrolled in 11 hospital/access sites were denied the allocation of medicines.
“The respondents are clearly in cahoots to achieve the following goals, namely to undermine the precious technical expertise and institutional memory of the complainant as long-time cancer control program manager, to get rid of pooled procurement and increase the sales of Roche Philippines Inc. particularly for Trastuzumab (Herceptin) 600mg SC vial which is still under its patent rights,” he said in his complaint.
Under the Universal Health Care Act, the people should have equitable and inclusive access to the quality services they need “where and when they need them without facing financial hardship,” he said.
At a press briefing earlier, Vergeire maintained that all the transactions in connection with the CSPMAP for 2022 were above-board and accounted for.
Cairo was the same DoH official who was presented last Thursday by the government prosecutors before the Quezon City Regional Trial Court who claimed that former Health secretary and now Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin, Vergeire and other senior officials withheld information on the anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia, which has been linked to the deaths of schoolchildren.