Medical group offers suggestions to improve gov’t COVID-19 response

An organization of more than 100 medical workers and advocates on Monday offered the government a list of suggestions on how to improve its response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

In a statement, the Solidarity of Health Advocates and Personnel for a Unified Plan to Defeat COVID-19 (SHAPE UP: Defeat COVID-19) said the government needed to “seriously and immediately take decisive action to address the dire situation holistically.”

The group also pointed out that placing high-risk areas in a modified enhanced community quarantine without the government’s comprehensive action plan and recalibration of strategies to prevent the spread of infection at the community level, as well as failures at so many basic aspects would “only prove futile” as it did in March.

Further, the group warned that the “militarist handling,” instead of a medical approach to the pandemic “wreaks fear among the people and proliferates human rights violations — while doing little to curb the number of cases.”

With this, the group proposed the following to immediately address the “exhaustion and demoralization” of the country’s health care workers:

1.) Allotment of 10% of the gross domestic product as a minimum budget for health care and COVID-19 response

• The group said the government must account all funds earmarked, donated and loaned for the COVID-19 response.
• It also noted that there should be appropriate funds for the research and development of a vaccine, treatment, and comprehensive public health measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

2.) Protection of medical workers both from public and private facilities

• The group suggested mass hiring instead of augmentation or redeployment of medical workers with regular positions and increased compensation and benefits to adequately attend to the influx of patients.
• The group also asked for the provision of “complete, appropriate and high quality” personal protective equipment and free RT-PCR testing every two weeks of duty for all health care workers.
• It also asked for workers to get a 40-hour duty in a week followed by at least 14-days quarantine with pay, free transportation, and decent board and lodging.
• There should also be an allocated facility and provisions for sick medical workers, free hospitalization, support for essential needs during quarantine and a P100,000 compensation for all COVID-19 positive health workers.
• It also asked for psycho-social support for all medical workers.

3.) Free mass testing, aggressive contact tracing, scientific, reliable and accountable health information system

• The group called for free mass testing using RT-PCR for contacts, secondary contacts, target groups, vulnerable persons and population samples in high-risk areas.
• It also said quarantine and isolation facilities must be adequately and appropriately equipped.
• Trained health workers and community level medical workers must be assigned to undertake contact tracing and identification “to encourage public cooperation” and “avoid non-compliance or untruthful information” due to fear of uniformed personnel doing house-to-house surveys.

4.) Improve health services without sacrificing the public’s non-COVID-19 health needs

• There should be a provision of free face masks and face shields for the public, while free health care and medicine should be provided in public health facilities.
• The government must develop and increase the number of testing centers and increase vital, life-saving supplies and equipment in all public hospitals with an adequate number of health care workers.
• A systematization and pro-active coordination of the Department of Health to hospitals must also be done.
• There should be a provision of community-based health care that is “promotive, preventive and comprehensive” in all communities.

5.) Sustained and comprehensive socio-economic assistance

• The group said a sustained social amelioration program for displaced workers and other vulnerable populations and appropriate funds for socio-economic programs that “will help tide the poor and middle-income earners" must be implemented.
• An efficient mass transportation must also be available and concerned agencies must improve measures to ensure safe public transportation and safety in buildings, offices and workplaces.
• It added that the government must also develop programs for food security, social services, livelihood assistance, and generate employment for jobless Filipinos and overseas Filipino workers affected by the shut down of economic enterprises.

Further, the group called for Health Secretary Francisco Duque III’s removal as DOH secretary and chairperson of the Inter-Agency Task Force amid the controversies ranging from corruption to his “failure to arrest the pandemic, endangering safety, health and lives of Filipinos, as well as unprecedented economic misery.”

The group also said public health experts, social scientists, epidemiologists, virologists, and other specialists must be designated to crucial government positions.

“The pandemic is a public health crisis and must therefore be approached with medical solutions and not punitive military intervention,” SHAPE UP emphasized. — DVM, GMA News