ILOILO City – The Department of Health has temporarily suspended the planned transfer of rural doctors from Visayas to private hospitals in Cebu City in light of the critical situation of coronavirus infections there.
Director Marlyn Convocar of DOH Region 6 confirmed the suspension on Monday.
She said the deployment of 25 Doctors to the Barrios (DTTBs) and 14 members of Post Residency Deployment Program (PRDP) to Cebu City will be “temporarily held in abeyance” until issues and concerns are settled with all concerned physicians and other stakeholders.
These DTTB doctors and PRDP members were supposedly scheduled to be sent to Cebu City today.
However, Convocar said they will be meeting all DTTBs and PRDP members first to hear out their concerns.
“Kon ano ang concensus sang group then we will bring that up to Manila (central office). Once we done that, we would know kon san-o sila i-deploy,” Convocar added.
On June 26, the DOH-6 received the directive from its central office assigning rural doctors to Cebu City.
Convocar clarified that the identified doctors set for transfer are “Rural Health Physicians and not OIC-Municipal Health Officers – which means their respective municipalities will not be left doctorless and health care services will continue.”
Convocar also said she is prepared to follow the decision of DOH-central office in relation to Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr.’s appeal to retain DTTBs in Iloilo province.
Defensor disclosed that last Sunday, June 28 the DTTB doctors went to his office to appeal for help to stop the Cebu mission.
This prompted Defensor to make an appeal, too, to National Task Force for COVID-19 chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. to spare doctors in Iloilo province.
“Yesterday I made a personnel appeal to Secretary Galvez because our COVID-19 cases here are rising so sabi ko to spare the DOH physician here in Iloilo from deployment to Cebu City and he texted me that he will help us,” said Defensor.
According to Defensor, the transfer of DTTBs would reduce the capacity of health facilities in every local government units (LGUs).
Meanwhile, Iloilo Association of Municipal Health Office Inc. (IAMHOI) was among the latest group of doctors who joined the call to pull out the planned deployment.
Headed by their president Dr. Sally Ticao from the Municipal Health Office of Oton, Iloilo, IAMHOI issued a statement opposing the move.
“IAMHOI recognizes the current need of Cebu for human resources for health to respond to this COVID-19 pandemic however, we believe that this move of transferring the currently deployed DTTBs is not the right approach to address this problem,” IAMHOI said.
“The different municipalities of the Province of Iloilo are also responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and currently doing all their efforts to prevent the spread on the communities. The DTTBs who are to be pulled and re-assigned are already essential part of the public health system, respond to the COVID-19 crisis in their respective municipalities. If the primary objective of the DTTB deployment in these municipalities is augmentation to the health workforce to address the public heath need, their pull out would deprive these municipalities’ their much needed services. Pulling out these DTTBs in their current assignment would greatly impact the COVID-19 response in their respective areas,” it added.
On Sunday, Western Visayas’ rural doctors under the DOH Doctors to the DTTB program was the first to issue a statement decrying the order deploying them to Cebu City beginning tomorrow to help unspecified private hospitals there.
In a statement, DTTB doctors expressed concern over DOH’s preparation for such deployment. They were informed about being pulled out from their current assignments in various municipalities only on Friday, June 26.
These doctors are to be stationed in Cebu from June 30 to Sept. 5 in four batches of 10 doctors for each batch of deployment. Each batch’s duty period is two weeks.
It was the DOH Undersecretary for Field Implementation and Coordination Team for Visayas and Mindanao Abdullah Dumama Jr. who ordered the deployment.
The barrio doctors raised the following concerns:
* no proper consultation was conducted
* no detailed guidelines and protocols to protect them were provided
* the deployment contradicts the thrust of the DTTB Program
“The absence of proper communication justifying the temporary reassignment of rural health physicians serving in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas to serve in private hospitals in Cebu City is a clear violation of the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers,” according to the doctors.
Section 6 (c) of the magna carta (Republic Act 7305) stated: “A public health worker shall not be transferred and/or reassigned, except when made in the interest of public service, in which case, the employee concerned shall be informed of the reasons therefore in writing.”/PN
