ILOILO CITY–The Department of Health in Western Visayas (DOH) has indefinitely suspended a controversial plan to send 40 rural doctors from the region to Cebu City amid protests.
At a press conference on Monday, DOH regional officials led by their director, Dr. Marlyn Convocar, said the reassignment has been called off until “issues and concerns” brought by the affected doctors and municipal health officers were settled.
The DOH had planned to send four batches of doctors with 10 batches per batch from June 30 to September 15 inclusive of 14-day quarantine periods.
The 40 doctors are under the Doctors To The Barrios (DTTB) Post Residency Development Program deployed to Western Visayas.
But the DTTB’s Batches 36 (Alab) and 37 (Mandala) called the DOH order “abrupt” and “exploitative”.
They said the order that would involve deployment to private hospitals is also contrary to the main objectives of the DTTB program to provide health care to rural communities especially Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas (GIDAs).
The Iloilo Association of Municipal Health Officers Inc., composed of 44 municipal and city health officers in Iloilo, is also protesting the reassignment of DTTB physicians to Cebu City.
While they recognized the need of Cebu City for more health workers, they said sending rural doctors from remote communities is the wrong approach.
“The different municipalities of Iloilo are also responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and currently doing all their efforts to prevent the spread of the communities,” said the Iloilo health officers in a statement.
“The DTTBs…are already essential part of the public health system responding to the COVID-19 crisis,” the group said.