DOH: Proposed CDC to absorb RITM personnel

The Department of Health (DOH) on Friday assured that all personnel from the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) will be absorbed into the proposed Center for Disease Control (CDC) if the bill creating it is enacted into law.

“I just like to assure all of the personnel in RITM na hindi natin bubuwagin ang RITM, wala ring katotohanan na mayroong mga tao from RITM na hindi maabsorb or mawawalan ng trabaho,” DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said at the press briefing.

"In fact, what we are going to do is to further strengthen Research Institute for Tropical Medicine because we are going to subsume the RITM into our current CDC which will have more funds, which will have more support, which will have more experts for us to be further guided into these different tasks that we have,” she said.

Vergeire said the RITM also wrote to the Health department and the legislators that they support the establishment of the CDC.

“[The] RITM specifically stated that they fully support the establishment of CDC, and that it is a national public health agency where RITM will be subsumed. We assure personnel in RITM that nobody will lose their work, everybody will be absorbed based on the capacity of each and every personnel in RITM,” she said.

Meanwhile, RITM Director Celia Carlos told the Senate panel on Thursday that the institute agreed to the proposed setup with their colleagues in the DOH to make the CDC structure “more cohesive.”

State of calamity

Meanwhile, Vergeire said the state of calamity due to the COVID-19 pandemic will not be extended if the proposed CDC becomes a law.

The state of calamity will expire on December 31, 2022.

The implementation of the emergency use authority, vaccination program for COVID-19, and regulating prices of commodities are all covered by the state of calamity.

“All of these provisions and considerations were already included in CDC bill. If that gets enacted before the end of the year, we do not need the state of calamity because we see right now our local governments already managed and the national government can also manage,” she said.

“Now if this bill will not enacted by the end of the year, that is the time that we need consider if we will request from the Office of the President another extension even just for one or two months because we still need to continue the response on COVID-19,” she added.—LDF, GMA Integrated News