No more doctor-less towns by yearend, DOH chief vows
MANILA, Philippines—After nearly 20 years of trying, all of the Philippines’s 1,634 cities and municipalities will have at least one doctor each by the end of the year, Health Secretary Enrique Ona said Friday.
Ona said the remaining 32 “doctor-less” and “very poor” municipalities in Abra, Ilocos Sur, Cagayan, Palawan, Tawi-Tawi and Basilan would have their own physicians by next month through the Department of Health’s Doctors to the Barrios (DTTB) program.
“The good news is that by the end of this year, all of these so-called doctor-less municipalities will be filled up. Since the program started in 1993, we’ve always had vacancies,” Ona told reporters.
Ona said, however, that the DOH was still trying to find ways to help these municipalities so that they could afford to pay for their own doctors.
He noted that some of the DTTB doctors would serve up to 50,000 people, or more than double than the doctors to population ratio of 1:20,000 set by the World Health Organization.
“The program aims to provide equitable healthcare services to all areas of the country by deploying competent, committed, community-oriented and dedicated physicians to serve inaccessible areas,” Ona said.
“We hope that in the not-so-distant future, we will be able to essentially have all our local governments become implementers of their own program. There will no longer be any Doctor to the Barrios program” directed by Manila, he added.
Then Health Secretary Juan Flavier began the program in May 1993 to encourage new doctors to serve at least two years in far-flung fifth- or sixth-class municipalities that could afford to have their own government doctor.
“Since 1993, 553 physicians have served in 390 municipalities all over the Philippines. Presently, our doctors are serving in 68 municipalities in 38 provinces and 16 regions across the country,” Ona said.
Besides serving for at least two years in poor rural communities, these doctors also get training from the Development Academy of the Philippines so that they could also get a degree in Master in Public Management Major in Health Systems and Development.
“Local government units are the ones who should really be responsible for this but fifth- and sixth- grade municipalities are really quite poor and they claim that they cannot afford to pay (for their own doctor). So, the national government assists them,” Ona said.
He said a new batch of 114 DTTB physicians finished their preparations for deployment and 92 of them have already been dispatched to different areas in need of doctors.
“I am saying that this is important because in our program of Kalusugan Pangkalahatan (Universal Health Care), primary care is very important. Meaning, these municipalities should have access to doctors,” Ona said.
“Once all poor Filipinos are covered by PhilHeath, these doctors will also be earning. They will have financial sustainability,” he added.
Ona said the DOH was also conducting a study to find out if there were municipalities that “graduated” from the program or were able to secure their own doctor in the last two decades.
“Some doctors might have decided to stay because they married someone in the municipality but that’s not enough,” he said.
The government created the DTTB program nearly two decades ago after it discovered that there were 271 municipalities that had had no physician for 10 years or more, resulting in high mortality rates in these areas.
