Visayas health workers ready for Metro Manila duty

GET THE JAB Nurses at Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City are urging people to get vaccinated as health workers prepare for the long battle against COVID-19. —DALE ISRAEL

CEBU CITY—At least 100 nurses and doctors from the Visayas will be sent to Metro Manila and its four neighboring provinces to augment their medical workforce as the surge of COVID-19 cases continues to overwhelm hospitals.

According to Assistant Secretary Jonji Gonzales of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas, qualified nurses will get a monthly salary of P33,575 while doctors will receive P60,901.

Health workers will also receive an incentive of P5,000 monthly for three months, and roundtrip travel expenses courtesy of the Department of Health (DOH), among others.

Opportunity

Their lodging and transportation will be shouldered by the hospital.

Gonzales said applicants must have six months of experience. “I’m calling on registered nurses and doctors who are unemployed to grab this opportunity and apply at the DOH regional centers,” Gonzales said.

As of Tuesday, 11 doctors, 35 nurses and four medical technologists from Cebu had qualified and would be sent to Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal.

In Eastern Visayas region, at least 15 nurses and a doctor also volunteered to be sent to Metro Manila.

“It is proper to help NCR (National Capital Region) which is the center of our economy. Otherwise, the entire country will also be affected,” Gonzales said.

He assured that the deployment of health-care workers from the Visayas would not affect the COVID-19 response in the region.

The critical care utilization rate in the region, he said, is below the threshold of 70 percent.At a press briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, the DOH Central Visayas spokesperson, said health-care workers bound for Metro Manila would stay there for at least a month but their assignment might be extended after an evaluation. They will leave Cebu on Wednesday.

Cebu situation improving

According to the OCTA Research group, composed of experts studying the coronavirus outbreak in the country, Cebu has shown a downtrend in new cases and hospital occupancy.

The island’s positivity rate, OCTA said, has also dropped to an “acceptable level” at less than 10 percent.

“Cebu and its large cities (of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu) have again shown that resilience and effective pandemic management are key against COVID-19,” it said.

Loreche said Central Visayas also sent bags of convalescent plasma to Metro Manila on April 2.

Convalescent plasma contains antibodies that can neutralize the virus and may be transfused to severely ill COVID-19 patients to improve their condition.

‘Safe zone’

“With what we are doing right now, I am very confident that we will not be needing so much health-care workers and not needing more beds than what we have because our critical care utilization is very, very low at 31 percent. So we really are in the safe zone for our bed allocation and for our manpower,” she said.

Alfredo Abelardo Benitez of the Office of the Provincial Consultant on Economic Affairs in Negros Occidental said nurses or doctors who wanted to be temporarily assigned in Metro Manila should submit an application letter, personal data sheet and a photocopy of their valid Professional Regulation Commission identification card.

For Central Visayas, qualified applicants are advised to email their documents to [email protected] or they may contact Monette Zuñiga at mobile number 0916-5208322.

Benitez said the nurses would be sent to the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Lung Center of the Philippines, San Lazaro Hospital, Tondo Medical Center and Rizal Medical Center. INQ