Cebu City hands P12M to DOH for new nurses

CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines — Cebu City has turned over P12 million to the Department of Health (DOH) in Central Visayas to expedite the hiring of nurses who will be deployed in the different private hospitals in the city.

Councilor Eduardo Rama Jr., head of the city council’s committees on social services and public services, said the funds would be used to hire at least 100 nurses for a period of three months.

“The city government wants to assist private hospitals that have been hounded by the shortage of nurses,” he said.

Rama said Dr. Guy Perez, DOH Central Visayas assistant director, received the check on Aug. 16.

Perez said the assistance was “very timely” as one of the major challenges faced by private hospitals swamped by coronavirus patients was “the pressing need for human resources.”

Cebu City Vice Mayor Michael Rama earlier met with administrators of the different private hospitals in the city swamped with COVID-19 patients and found that their operations were hampered by the lack of nurses to attend to these patients.

Rama said they decided to course through the assistance to the DOH in order to speed up the process, as it was in the best position to determine how many nurses would be needed and for how long, or until such a time that the number of COVID-19 infections in the city would have been controlled.

As of Aug. 21, the city still has 4,961 active infections, second only to Cebu province, which has 5,848 active cases. Both the city and province of Cebu accounted for over half of the active COVID-19 cases in Central Visayas, which totaled 17,058 as of Saturday.

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The money was taken from the P4.5-billion supplemental budget approved by the city council in July for COVID-19 response.

The city government is also separately hiring at least 200 nurses to address manpower shortage in both public and some private hospitals here.

Since last year, at least 65 nurses at the city-run Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) have resigned after the local government failed to pay their salaries for at least four months.

Rama said city officials were resolving the matter and vowed to pay what was due to the nurses, including those who have left CCMC.

Dr. Jaime Bernadas, director of the DOH in Central Visayas, said at least 400 registered nurses would be needed to augment medical front-liners in Cebu and the rest of Central Visayas.

“I really implore nurses to apply in our various hospitals and help their counterparts in the fight against COVID-19,” he said.

“Our hospitals still have vacant beds for COVID-19 patients but lack the manpower to take care of the patients,” he added.

Last year, nurses in the city mulled over the possibility of quitting their jobs due to lack of support from the government, prompting Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella (now on medical leave) to grant a P10,000 monthly incentive to each of the 1,800 doctors, nurses and other medical staff in private hospitals for three months.