‘Gov’t should vaccinate PH health workers’

The Philippine government—not other nations—is mandated to ensure that health-care workers deployed for overseas employment are vaccinated against COVID-19, a lawmaker said.

Bayan Muna Rep. Ferdinand Gaite has slammed Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III for saying that the request to the United Kingdom for vaccines was for health-care workers to be sent there.

“Bello’s recent explanation that the vaccines he requested from countries requesting Filipino nurses and health care were for these workers only exposes this government’s ineptitude and neglect,” Gaite told a press briefing on Friday.

He said the government “is obligated to take care of its own workers through timely vaccination, among others, and should not rely on other countries for their well-being.”

Gaite was responding to Bello’s denial of a plan to ask the United Kingdom and Germany for COVID-19 vaccines in exchange for sending more nurses and overseas Filipino workers to these countries.

The plan was severely criticized by health-care workers’ organizations as similar to “bartering” health-care workers as if they were mere commodities.The Department of Labor and Employment later explained that the vaccines being requested would be used to immunize health-care workers against COVID-19 before they are deployed abroad.

The Philippines has yet to receive the promised Pfizer and Astra Zeneca vaccines from the Gavi COVAX facility, although President Duterte is scheduled to welcome the first batch of Sinovac vaccines scheduled to arrive on Sunday.