Health workers have plenty to gripe about

Wearing red arm bands and carrying protest banners, health workers from various hospitals yesterday marked National Health Workers Day by taking to the streets to demand higher wages.

The health workers, who also demanded safer working conditions and an end to contractualization, marched from the Department of Health main office to the Fabella hospital, before proceeding to Mendiola Street in front of Malacañang.

Another hot issue was the reported plan to abolish the Fabella hospital, a government maternity center, where about 1,300 medical and nonmedical staff are expected to lose tenure.

“We did not meet the Millennium Development Goals to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates so why dissolve the Fabella hospital, the country’s national maternity center?” said Robert Mendoza, national president of the Alliance of Health Workers.

In a phone interview yesterday,  Health Secretary Janette Garin clarified that the Fabella hospital was not going to be abolished but was merely going to be transfered to a new, bigger building behind the DOH office, which is expected to be finished by May 2017.

The DOH said the old hospital was no longer structurally sound.

“The existing Fabella hospital will operate until after the construction of the new structure is completed next year,” Garin told the Inquirer, adding that the DOH engaged a third-party company to assess the  state of the hospital after a fire recently broke out in one of its elevators.

The firm’s assessment showed that 80 percent of four of the eight buildings of the hospital had “reduced structural integrity.” The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) had recommended that these buildings be “immediately vacated,” said the health secretary.

As to the employees working in the affected buildings, they will be temporarily assigned to other DOH-run hospitals nearby, including the Philippine General Hospital.

Patients who will be affected by the limited operations at the old facility will be accommodated in other government hospitals.

Garin assured all employees of the hospital that they would not be let go when the transfer had been completed as the hospital would be needing more staff to operate the future 700-bed health facility.

Meanwhile, nurses from the Quirino Province Medical Center also joined the protest action with the Filipino Nurses United (FNU) yesterday to seek relief from their grim working situation brought about by the devolution of hospitals to the local government.