DOH won’t force barrio doctors to serve in Cebu

The Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday said the reassignment to Cebu City of front-liners belonging to the government’s Doctors to the Barrios (DTTB) program would be on a voluntary basis as it planned tapping medical graduates to fill in the need for health workers in the city, which is seeing a surge in new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that due to the issues on the redeployment of the doctors, the DOH had decided to make it voluntary for now while the agency continued to find ways to address Cebu City’s medical needs. She, however, maintained that the DOH thought of the redeployment because it was “trying to exhaust our resources.”

“It’s quite disheartening that a lot of them refused, especially that we are in a public health emergency. Nevertheless, we had a dialogue with them and now the recourse is that this would be voluntary so that there would no longer be any issue in the meantime,” Vergeire said.

Earlier, the DOH sought to reassign 40 doctors under the DTTB program to augment the health workforce in Cebu City. Under the plan, the doctors will be sent to the city in four batches on a two-week rotation.

But after a meeting on Sunday, the DOH learned that only 26 doctors could be pulled out of the program because some were pregnant while the rest were the only physicians serving their remote communities. Some doctors under the DTTB opposed the redeployment, which they said was “abrupt” and “exploitative.” They said they were not properly consulted by the DOH about it.

No volunteers

Dr. Renilyn Reyes, head of the DOH’s Public Health Program Development in Western Visayas, said regional health officials met with doctors under the DTTB and the Post Residency Development Program (PRDP) on Tuesday to discuss the crisis.

“The deployment is still open but on voluntary basis,” Reyes told the Inquirer.

As of Tuesday, however, there were no volunteers from Western Visayas.

The Philippine Medical Students’ Association and the Association of Philippine Medical Colleges-Student Network also supported the DTTB and called on the DOH to instead implement a scheme for a mass hiring of doctors to augment the medical personnel in Cebu instead of reassigning rural physicians.

“By recalling physicians from the far-flung communities that they serve, the DOH severs the people’s access to health care and leaves them in an even more vulnerable state. This is especially worrying in the midst of a pandemic and with emerging seasonal diseases, such as dengue and leptospirosis, to name a few,” the medical students said in a joint statement that was also signed by student councils of at least 11 medical schools in the country.

Vergeire said while doctors under the DTTB might be assigned to private hospitals in Cebu, they would only serve to supplement the workforce in triage areas and not in operating rooms.

Emergency hiring

To further boost Cebu’s health workforce, Vergeire said the DOH would assign to the city a number of front-liners that it would hire under an emergency hiring program. On top of this, the DOH is also planning to tap medical graduates earlier authorized by the agency to help in its COVID-19 response.

“If and when this plan of the DOH pushes through, we will assign them in the outpatient, triage areas which wouldn’t require too much decision-making. [Also], they would still be supervised by licensed doctors,” she said.

In Iloilo City, St. Paul’s Hospital of Iloilo (SPHI) remained on lockdown after eight doctors and a nurse tested positive for COVID-19.

Dr. Ella Mae Divinagracia, SPHI infectious diseases specialist, said 164 hospital workers, including 14 doctors, were quarantined in the hospital with another 48 doctors on facility quarantine.

She said they were waiting for the release of the test results before deciding on lifting the lockdown.