New chief says DSWD badly lacks medical staff

Residential and nonresidential care facilities operated by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) around the country are in dire need of medical staff to tend to the big number of people seeking temporary shelter.

Social Welfare Secretary Judy Taguiwalo said the DSWD only has 144 doctors, nurses, psychologists, dentists and dieticians to attend to nearly 11,000 children, teenagers, seniors, persons with disabilities, and others in crisis temporarily living in 71 DSWD residential and nonresidential care facilities around the country as of the second quarter of the year.

The second quarter ended in June, at the same time as the administration of President  Benigno S. Aquino III.

The DSWD has only 13 doctors, seven of them based in Metro Manila, and 59 nurses, 29 of them in the metropolis, which leaves the vast majority of the DSWD centers with no doctors or nurses.

The DSWD has 47 psychologists, 15 of them in Metro Manila, and 20 nutritionists or dieticians, four of them also in the capital. Of five dentists, three are based in Metro Manila.

“This is a most sorry situation that should be remedied, as many of our clients are in need of regular medical attention or monitoring,” Taguiwalo said.

“The best we can do for them is provide food, shelter and the most basic hygiene needs. We have very far to go to reach standards that could even be remotely called adequate or sufficient,” she added.

She said she discovered that despite the huge numbers of persons they served, the DSWD centers had a low rate of fund utilization.

The problem usually lay with bureaucratic procedures, she found out, such as the late approval of purchase requests made by center heads; the slow procurement of supplies and construction materials, and the prohibition from using maintenance funds and operating expenses for construction needs.

The DSWD runs 64 residential and seven nonresidential care facilities across the country providing for the disadvantaged and vulnerable sectors, and training and rehabilitation for persons with disabilities.

DSWD personnel seek to provide alternative family care arrangements with the hope of eventually reuniting their wards with their families and communities.

In the second quarter, DSWD care centers housed 10,878 persons, of whom nearly half or 4,695 persons were discharged during the period.

Those categorized as “families and individuals in crisis” comprised the biggest number of clients at 5,370. The Jose Fabella Center in Manila served 1,759 street families and dwellers.