Doctors oppose DOH move to assign them to Cebu private hospitals

DAVAO CITY—A move to deploy medical professionals from the Doctors to the Barrios program to Cebu City to help quell the coronavirus there would deprive isolated and poor communities of the most basic of health care, according to doctors’ groups.

Dr. Magdalena Barcelon, president of the doctors’ group Community Medicine Practitioners and Advocates Association (COMPASS), said she wondered what would happen to the health care system in remote places which are being served only by the Doctors to the Barrios program.

If doctors in the Doctors to the Barrios Program were pulled out, “who will take care of vulnerable communities in far-flung villages especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Barcelon in an online interview with Inquirer. “How will the communities protect themselves?” she said.

She said sending the doctors to urban centers would only defeat the purpose of the program, which was to send doctors to communities in geographically-isolated, disadvantaged areas, where people are too poor and deprived access to regular health services.

“Why send the doctors to private hospitals? I’m sure these private hospitals can hire doctors. We have 3,500 new doctors graduating each year,” Barcelon said.

In a statement the Doctors to the Barrios (DTTB) questioned the “abrupt and exploitative” order which was issued without prior consultation.

Doctors cited Section 6 of Republic Act 7305, also known as the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers, which provided that a public health worker should not be transferred and or reassigned, except in the interest of public service, in which case, the employee concerned should be informed in writing of the reasons for the move.

“We strongly condemn this directive,” the statement issued by several batches of doctors—36, Alab and 37 Mandala— in the program said.

“The DTTBs and the local chief executives should have been represented in decision-making involving this temporary reassignment,” said the doctors.

“Failing to do so makes such directive exploitative for doctors and inconsiderate for the communities that they serve,” part of the DTTB statement read.

TSB