20M poor Filipinos to get mandatory basic check-up by Christmas –DOH

Some 20 million poor Filipinos will get mandatory basic check-up by December as part of the Duterte administration's universal healthcare program, Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial said Wednesday.

At a press briefing, Ubial said the "the early Christmas gift" will be launched on Thursday to achieve an end date of December 25.

"The first 100 days is the check-up. That means our goal is to really look into who are listed in the National Household Targeting System of the DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development) and to get to all those individuals," Ubial said.

She said maintenance medicine will be at hand while additional procedures such as surgeries will be scheduled at a later date.

"Kung sino ho ang makitang may further need, diagnostic—kailangan ng CT Scan, MRI, kailangan operahan—yun po ay gagawin natin in the immediate future. But the drugs and medicine, these are now available. As soon as the patients are detected in our check-ups, they will be provided the maintenance medicine," Ubial said.

The program's launch on Thursday will coincide with the National Health Summit, an event which Sen. Risa Hontiveros hopes will "underscore the importance" of local government units in preventive response.

"We need to seriously study the possibility of building super barangay centers to strengthen our current barangay health system by modernizing it with adequate facilities, personnel, and expertise," she said.

Universal health care is part of the Duterte Health Agenda that will be launched at the summit. Its three main goals is to prevent premature deaths "from the scourges of stressful daily living and emerging public health threats like drug addiction and Zika"; to give poor Filipinos freedom from high cost of medical care; and to give all Filipinos satisfactory experiences when they access health services.

Ubial clarified that health professionals were removed from certain grassroots programs such as “Doctor to the Barrios” program due to a directive by the Department of Budget and Management to implement the fourth phase of the Salary Standardization Law.

"[Because] we are constrained on the allocation of the ceiling total, nagbawas ng number of health professionals in that category. But we have to comply with the guidelines of DBM," Ubial said.

In response, the Department of Health created new positions in other categories to make up for the lost jobs.

"Dun po nakapasok sa public health assistance, which are nurses. We increased the number from 600 to 2,400. For the doctors, it’s under the universal health care providers. So that’s about 400, ginawa naming 1,600," Ubial explained.

"In effect, the total human resource complement that the Department of Health will deploy to the local government units and to the frontline health facilities has increased," she added. —KBK, GMA News