HEAL. STRUGGLE. LIBERATE.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
2012 health budget reveals Aquino’s policy of neglect and profiteering out of the ailing public
The 2012 proposed health budget generally reveals Aquino’s policy of neglect and unabashed commercialization of public health services instead of dutifully providing it as a public service, claimed by Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD).
Although there would seem to be an increase in the proposed P42.693B health budget for 2012 from this year’s P32.427B, the increase is still gravely inadequate considering the steady inflation and the sustained increase in the prices of medicines and medical equipment which is badly needed by the largely poor population; nor will it provide the adequate number of public health personnel, said Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD secretary general.
While the Aquino administration brags about an increase of more than P10B in the DOH budget, the said additional funds are not allotted where they would matter more. For example, the allotment for Maintenance, Operations and Other Expenditures (MOOE) for public hospitals was minimally increased if not retained. The Capital Outlay allotment (like in the 2011 budget) is still ZERO. The budget for Personal Services (PS) is surprisingly slightly increased and in other hospitals even decreased when the allotment for PS should reflect a considerable increase considering the last tranche of the Salary Increase for government employees takes effect next year.
In a study made by the Coalition for Health Budget Increase (CHBI) of the proposed 2012 Budget, the increase in the health budget defines the Aquinio Health Agenda of privatization and commercialization of public health care which will further jeopardize the health of the people. The bigger chunk of the increase of P12.5 B is allotted to PhilHealth (P8.5 B more from its 2011 budget); health insurance schemes including PhilHealth had been scrutinized for being non-beneficial if public hospitals remain ill-equipped and understaffed. With the inherent limitation in benefits from PhilHealth, members still spend from their own pockets for their medical needs. Another P3B is allotted for government equity for Public-Private Partnership in 25 regional hospitals.
According to HEAD, the proposed 2012 health budget is a far cry from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation of 5% of gross national product (GNP) that should be allotted for health, which is around P440 billion. This budget being weaved by the Aquino leadership would only result in more commercialization and privatization of public health care services.
While the group challenged the Aquino government to stop cuts in subsidies for social services, it instead calls for a P90B health budget to somehow ease the greater inaccessibility and address the immediate needs of health workers in salaries and benefits.
“Indeed the proposed budget reflects privatization in its entirety, with the government continuing to diminish spending in social services and scheming to generate profit out of the ailing public.”
Although there would seem to be an increase in the proposed P42.693B health budget for 2012 from this year’s P32.427B, the increase is still gravely inadequate considering the steady inflation and the sustained increase in the prices of medicines and medical equipment which is badly needed by the largely poor population; nor will it provide the adequate number of public health personnel, said Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD secretary general.
While the Aquino administration brags about an increase of more than P10B in the DOH budget, the said additional funds are not allotted where they would matter more. For example, the allotment for Maintenance, Operations and Other Expenditures (MOOE) for public hospitals was minimally increased if not retained. The Capital Outlay allotment (like in the 2011 budget) is still ZERO. The budget for Personal Services (PS) is surprisingly slightly increased and in other hospitals even decreased when the allotment for PS should reflect a considerable increase considering the last tranche of the Salary Increase for government employees takes effect next year.
In a study made by the Coalition for Health Budget Increase (CHBI) of the proposed 2012 Budget, the increase in the health budget defines the Aquinio Health Agenda of privatization and commercialization of public health care which will further jeopardize the health of the people. The bigger chunk of the increase of P12.5 B is allotted to PhilHealth (P8.5 B more from its 2011 budget); health insurance schemes including PhilHealth had been scrutinized for being non-beneficial if public hospitals remain ill-equipped and understaffed. With the inherent limitation in benefits from PhilHealth, members still spend from their own pockets for their medical needs. Another P3B is allotted for government equity for Public-Private Partnership in 25 regional hospitals.
According to HEAD, the proposed 2012 health budget is a far cry from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation of 5% of gross national product (GNP) that should be allotted for health, which is around P440 billion. This budget being weaved by the Aquino leadership would only result in more commercialization and privatization of public health care services.
While the group challenged the Aquino government to stop cuts in subsidies for social services, it instead calls for a P90B health budget to somehow ease the greater inaccessibility and address the immediate needs of health workers in salaries and benefits.
“Indeed the proposed budget reflects privatization in its entirety, with the government continuing to diminish spending in social services and scheming to generate profit out of the ailing public.”
Friday, July 29, 2011
166 CONTRACTUAL WORKERS SUMMARILY DISMISSED BY DOH SEEK “JUSTICE”
“Unjust, inhumane, morally degrading,” these were the general sentiments of 166 Job Order/Contractual Personnel summarily dismissed last June 30, 2011 by the DOH central office from further undertaking the health program Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and Nutrition (MNCHN) under the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control (NCDPC). Among them were 75 registered nurses that comprise 46% of the total project workforce.
As per the account of “Mark”, one of the field nurses, they learned of their termination late afternoon of June 30, 2011, from Ms. Vivencia Martinez, NCDPC Administrative officer who instructed 166 of them not to report for work anymore effective the following day Friday, July 1, 2011 because, according to her, NCDPC Director IV Dr. Lilibeth David said their Contracts have already ended. Then, at exactly 5 p.m. of the same day, a memo was posted signed by Dr. Kenneth Ronquillo, Director IV of the Health Human Resource Development Bureau (HHRDB) affirming said order with further advise for them to undergo a clearance process for the release of their last salary for service rendered between June 15 to 30, 2011.
“We were stunned and many were devastated of the sudden and unexpected termination of our contracts. Many of us nurses just arrived from an exhausting field work doing measles immunization where we really scoured the remotest villages to ensure that young children were given the measle shots.”
He said that the action of the present NCDPC management team under Dr. Lilibeth David was illegal if not questionable because the workers have already signed a contract for July-December 2011 under the former NCDPC head Director IV Dr. Eduardo C. Janairo prior to his transfer to his current assignment at Center for Health and Development-NCR. The contract signing was done in May 2011 after a satisfactory job performance evaluation of the workers that served as basis for the renewal of their contracts from July to December, 2011.
Aggravating this “injustice” was the holding and non-release of the workers’ last salary and reimbursements of work-related expenses. Not only were they not given due notice of their termination, they were also deprived of the salary that they have already worked for therefore rightfully theirs.
A petition signed by some of the terminated workers, including nurses, appealing for an immediate resolution of the case has been submitted to the Office of the Secretary, Dr. Enrique Ona; no response yet. A complaint has also been filed with the Ombudsman and a letter was likewise submitted to the legal department of the Department of Health.
As per the account of “Mark”, one of the field nurses, they learned of their termination late afternoon of June 30, 2011, from Ms. Vivencia Martinez, NCDPC Administrative officer who instructed 166 of them not to report for work anymore effective the following day Friday, July 1, 2011 because, according to her, NCDPC Director IV Dr. Lilibeth David said their Contracts have already ended. Then, at exactly 5 p.m. of the same day, a memo was posted signed by Dr. Kenneth Ronquillo, Director IV of the Health Human Resource Development Bureau (HHRDB) affirming said order with further advise for them to undergo a clearance process for the release of their last salary for service rendered between June 15 to 30, 2011.
“We were stunned and many were devastated of the sudden and unexpected termination of our contracts. Many of us nurses just arrived from an exhausting field work doing measles immunization where we really scoured the remotest villages to ensure that young children were given the measle shots.”
He said that the action of the present NCDPC management team under Dr. Lilibeth David was illegal if not questionable because the workers have already signed a contract for July-December 2011 under the former NCDPC head Director IV Dr. Eduardo C. Janairo prior to his transfer to his current assignment at Center for Health and Development-NCR. The contract signing was done in May 2011 after a satisfactory job performance evaluation of the workers that served as basis for the renewal of their contracts from July to December, 2011.
Aggravating this “injustice” was the holding and non-release of the workers’ last salary and reimbursements of work-related expenses. Not only were they not given due notice of their termination, they were also deprived of the salary that they have already worked for therefore rightfully theirs.
A petition signed by some of the terminated workers, including nurses, appealing for an immediate resolution of the case has been submitted to the Office of the Secretary, Dr. Enrique Ona; no response yet. A complaint has also been filed with the Ombudsman and a letter was likewise submitted to the legal department of the Department of Health.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Health care under Aquino: worse than ever
Health organizations led by Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) join the massive protest during the President Aquino’s second State of the Nation Address (SONA) to dramatize the real state of the nation's health.
Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD secretary general said,“health care under P-noy has only gone worse with his policies and programs of privatization and other deceptive palliatives.”
The group lamented that nothing politically healthy and positive came out of Aquino. From the appointment of a pro-business secretary to the Department of Health to the Aquino Health Agenda, to his obsession to PhilHealth as an answer to the inaccessibility of health care. “So far Aquino’s programs on health care point only to the direction of institutionalizing a policy of public health care for sale, as translated by profit schemes in public hospitals as he justifies this by budget cuts in social services like health, ” Rivera said.
Income generation has been the policy for public hospitals, with the diminution of their budget. Management of public hospitals are directed to earn than to ask for higher health budget. In the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), the country’s flagship hospital, Class D indigent patients are now being charged with like X-ray and other laboratory fees previously given free of charge. Worse, even the use of comfort rooms in the said hospital has been a target for income generation. Inside the PGH complex, private clinics, pharmacy and laboratory services are being leased out to a businessman at the Faculty Medical Arts Building (FMAB is being leased out by private businessman, wherein private clinics, pharmacy and laboratory services operates as private enterprise to gain income). At the Philippine Orthopedic Center, there had been an increase of 100-200% in its fees for medical services.
Hospitals including Philippine Orthopedic Center, San Lazaro Hospital, Research Institute for Tropical Medicine,San Lazaro Hospital, Everley Chilles Hospital and Western Visayas Sanitarium are all targets of his privatization program as declared in the Public-Private Partnership Summit in November last year. Meanwhile, the National Center for Mental Health is in danger of being phased out with the impending sale of its location, Welfareville in Mandaluyong, which will affect more than 4000 patients.
Video from YahooNews Philippines
PhilHealth will not solve the basic problems of inaccessibility of the poor to health care. What will be the benefit of a PhilHealth membership when in many parts of the country, the lack of health facilities and medical personnel remains sorely unaddressed? Even the proposed P44.4B health budget for 2012 does not reflect the much needed budget to maintain existing facilities nor to improve them.
Meanwhile, instead of creating and filling plantilla positions in many understaffed public hospitals and health agencies, Aquino pursues the RN Heals program. The program is very temporary and takes advantage of unemployed nurses.
The group challenges Aquino to genuinely respond to the need of the ailing health care system. He should work on increasing the health budget, stop privatization of public hospitals, protect the democratic and economic welfare of public health workers and professionals and stop being subservient to the dictates of the World Trade Organization.
Furthermore, Aquino should heed the people who cry for just wages for workers, genuine agrarian reform for farmers, justice for victims of human rights violations and make Gloria Macapagal-Arroy and her cohorts accountable for their plunder and abuse of the Filipino people.
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Militants: We’ve heard that last year:Militants: We’ve heard that last year
Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD secretary general said,“health care under P-noy has only gone worse with his policies and programs of privatization and other deceptive palliatives.”
The group lamented that nothing politically healthy and positive came out of Aquino. From the appointment of a pro-business secretary to the Department of Health to the Aquino Health Agenda, to his obsession to PhilHealth as an answer to the inaccessibility of health care. “So far Aquino’s programs on health care point only to the direction of institutionalizing a policy of public health care for sale, as translated by profit schemes in public hospitals as he justifies this by budget cuts in social services like health, ” Rivera said.
Income generation has been the policy for public hospitals, with the diminution of their budget. Management of public hospitals are directed to earn than to ask for higher health budget. In the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), the country’s flagship hospital, Class D indigent patients are now being charged with like X-ray and other laboratory fees previously given free of charge. Worse, even the use of comfort rooms in the said hospital has been a target for income generation. Inside the PGH complex, private clinics, pharmacy and laboratory services are being leased out to a businessman at the Faculty Medical Arts Building (FMAB is being leased out by private businessman, wherein private clinics, pharmacy and laboratory services operates as private enterprise to gain income). At the Philippine Orthopedic Center, there had been an increase of 100-200% in its fees for medical services.
Hospitals including Philippine Orthopedic Center, San Lazaro Hospital, Research Institute for Tropical Medicine,San Lazaro Hospital, Everley Chilles Hospital and Western Visayas Sanitarium are all targets of his privatization program as declared in the Public-Private Partnership Summit in November last year. Meanwhile, the National Center for Mental Health is in danger of being phased out with the impending sale of its location, Welfareville in Mandaluyong, which will affect more than 4000 patients.
Video from YahooNews Philippines
PhilHealth will not solve the basic problems of inaccessibility of the poor to health care. What will be the benefit of a PhilHealth membership when in many parts of the country, the lack of health facilities and medical personnel remains sorely unaddressed? Even the proposed P44.4B health budget for 2012 does not reflect the much needed budget to maintain existing facilities nor to improve them.
Meanwhile, instead of creating and filling plantilla positions in many understaffed public hospitals and health agencies, Aquino pursues the RN Heals program. The program is very temporary and takes advantage of unemployed nurses.
The group challenges Aquino to genuinely respond to the need of the ailing health care system. He should work on increasing the health budget, stop privatization of public hospitals, protect the democratic and economic welfare of public health workers and professionals and stop being subservient to the dictates of the World Trade Organization.
Furthermore, Aquino should heed the people who cry for just wages for workers, genuine agrarian reform for farmers, justice for victims of human rights violations and make Gloria Macapagal-Arroy and her cohorts accountable for their plunder and abuse of the Filipino people.
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Militants: We’ve heard that last year:Militants: We’ve heard that last year
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care
By Steve Brouwer - Monthly Review Press, July 21st 2011
Revolutionary Doctors, a new book by author Steve Brouwer and published by Monthly Review Press, gives readers a first-hand account of Venezuela’s innovative and inspiring program of community health care, designed to serve—and largely carried out by—the poor themselves. Drawing on long-term participant observations as well as in-depth research, author Steve Brouwer tells the story of Venezuela’s Integral Community Medicine program, in which doctor-teachers move into the countryside and poor urban areas to recruit and train doctors from among peasants and workers.
The following excerpt, also available in PDF, was made available to readers through the International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
Where Do Revolutionary Doctors Come From?
The campesinos would have run, immediately and with unreserved enthusiasm, to help their brothers.
—CHE GUEVARA, “On Revolutionary Medicine,” 1960
Even though he came to Cuba with a rifle slung over his shoulder and entered Havana in 1959 as one of the victorious commanders of the Cuban Revolution, he still continued to think of himself as a doctor. Five years earlier, the twenty-five-year-old Argentine had arrived in Guatemala and offered to put his newly earned medical degree at the service of a peaceful social transformation. Dr. Ernesto Guevara was hoping to find work in the public health services and contribute to the wide-ranging reforms being initiated by President Arbenz, but he never had much opportunity to work as a physician in Guatemala. Within months of his arrival, Arbenz’s government was brought down by the military coup d’état devised by the United Fruit Company, some Guatemalan colonels, the U.S. State Department, and the CIA.
Che never lost sight of the value of his original aspiration—combining the humanitarian mission of medicine with the creation of a just society. When he addressed the Cuban militia on August 19, 1960, a year and a half after the triumph of the revolution, he chose to speak about “Revolutionary Medicine” and the possibility of educating a new kind of doctor.
“A few months ago, here in Havana, it happened that a group of newly graduated doctors did not want to go into the country’s rural areas and demanded remuneration before they would agree to go. . . .But what would have happened if instead of these boys, whose families generally were able to pay for their years of study, others of less fortunate means had just finished their schooling and were beginning the exercise of their profession? What would have occurred if two or three hundred campesinos had emerged, let us say by magic, from the university halls? What would have happened, simply, is that the campesinos would have run, immediately and with unreserved enthusiasm, to help their brothers.”
Since then, Cuban medicine and health services have been developed in a number of unique and revolutionary ways, but only now, nearly fifty years later, has Che’s dream come to full fruition. Today it is literally true that campesinos, along with the children of impoverished working-class and indigenous communities, are becoming doctors and running, “with unreserved enthusiasm, to help their brothers.”
While this is happening on the mountainsides of Haiti, among the Garifuna people on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, in the villages of Africa and the highlands of Bolivia, it is occurring on the grandest scale in the rural towns and city barrios of Venezuela. When I was living in the mountains of western Venezuela in 2007 and 2008, I witnessed the emergence of revolutionary doctors every morning as I walked out the door of our little tin-roofed house. The scene would have delighted Che:
As the sun rises above the mountain behind the village of Monte Carmelo and the white mist begins to lift off the cloud forest, four young campesinos walk along the road in their wine-red polo shirts with their crisp, white jackets folded up under their arms to protect them from the dust. At 7 a.m. they wave goodbye to the high school students who are waiting to begin their classes in three rooms at the women’s cooperative and then hop aboard the “taxi,” a tough, thirtyyear-old Toyota pickup truck that often packs twenty or more people in the back. They travel down the winding mountain road, through the deep ravine at the bottom, and up the hill on the far side of the valley to the larger town of Sanare, where they are going to work all morning alongside Cuban doctors in neighborhood consulting offices and the modern Diagnostic Clinic.
Around 7:45, four more medical students from the village, already donning their white jackets, walk by our house, past the plaza and the little church, and gather in front of a small concrete block building called the ambulatorio. About the same time, they are joined by three more medical students who emerge from Carlos’s bright blue jeep,“the Navigator,” one of the other vehicles in the taxi cooperative that serves the village. These students from Sanare pull on their white jackets, hug their compañeros, and wait for Elsy, a health committee volunteer who is studying to be a nurse, to unlock the gate to the ambulatorio, the walk-in clinic that offers Barrio Adentro medical service.
As I stroll by, I see the prospective patients sitting on the benches of the small, covered patio in front of the entrance door. They are waiting for Dr. Tomasa, the family medical specialist. Two chirpy teenage girls sit next to Dr. Raul’s dentistry room and grin with perfect-looking smiles. “What could be wrong with your teeth?” I ask.
“Nothing,” responds one of them, “Dr. Raul is giving us another checkup.” Another checkup? Their parents never had a single checkup when they were young—consequently, there are many people over forty or fifty who have very few teeth.
By 8 a.m. one of the medical students stands behind the simple wooden counter, performing receptionist duties. Another shuttles back and forth to the file shelves, organizing and updating medical information that is kept on every family in the community. A third chats informally with the waiting patients, entertaining their small children, and informally inquiring about their families’ health. The other four students stand alongside Dr. Tomasa in the consulting office, watching her take family and individual histories and give examinations. They also fetch medicines, take temperatures, and weigh healthy children who are accompanying their mothers. Today, like every day, Dr. Tomasa says to her students, “Por favor, more questions. This is how we learn. You can never ask too many questions.”
Monte Carmelo is a small village that stretches along a single paved road on a mountain ridge in the foothills of the Andes in the state of Lara. Before Hugo Chávez assumed the presidency of Venezuela in 1999, the road was unpaved and the high school did not exist. According to the 2007 census, its population consisted of 129 families and approximately 700 individuals, nearly all of them supporting themselves by working small parcels of land by hand, or with horses and oxen. That same year nine residents of Monte Carmelo were medical students. Eight were studying Medicina Integral Comunitaria (popularly known as MIC), an intensive six-year course that in English is usually called Comprehensive Community Medicine. A ninth village resident was studying medicine in Cuba. Two more young women from a neighboring hamlet were also in medical school. They were part of a group of sixty-seven students in this agricultural region who were becoming doctors of medicine.
The students are a diverse lot: some are nineteen or twenty years old and have recently finished high school; others are closer to thirty and have young children; a few are even older. Some young mothers have recently completed their secondary education through Mission Ribas, one of the Bolivarian social missions that bring adults back to school on evenings and weekends. All of the students are enthusiastic about their role in fostering good health and introducing reliable medical care into the fabric of their community and the larger world. And many of them dream of emulating their Cuban teachers and one day serving as internationalist physicians themselves in remote and impoverished parts of the world.
This experiment in training new doctors in MIC would be worthy of international attention even if the program was limited to the 67 students in this remote coffee-growing region in the state of Lara. But in fact they represent only a tiny fraction of a gigantic effort to transform medical education and health care delivery throughout all of Venezuela. Nearly 25,000 students were enrolled in the first four years of MIC in 2007 2008, and by 2009 and 2010 they were joined by more students, swelling the ranks of students enrolled in all six years of MIC to approximately 30,000. This is almost as many as the total number of doctors who were practicing medicine in all capacities in Venezuela when Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998.
One unique aspect of MIC is that the students in Monte Carmelo do not have to leave the campo, the countryside, nor do students in the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuelan cities have to desert their barrios in order to attend medical school. Medicina Integral Comunitaria is a “university without walls” that trains young doctors in their home environments. This is not a short-term course for health aides or “barefoot doctors,” but a rigorous program designed to produce a new kind of physician. Every morning during their years of study, the MIC students help doctors working in Barrio Adentro attend to patients’ illnesses and learn to comprehend the broad public health needs of their communities. And every afternoon, they meet with their MIC professors in a series of formal medical classes that constitute a rigorous curriculum and include all the medical sciences studied at traditional universities.
The MIC education program could not exist without Barrio Adentro, the nationwide health system that first began delivering primary care in 2003 thanks to an enormous commitment of expertise from Cuba. From 2004 to 2010, Barrio Adentro continually deployed between 10,000 and 14,000 Cuban doctors and 15,000 to 20,000 other Cuban medical personnel—dentists, nurses, physical therapists, optometrists, and technicians. Their services are available to all Venezuelans for free at almost 7,000 walk-in offices and over 500 larger diagnostic clinics, and they have been very effective in meeting the needs of 80 percent of the population that had been ill-served or not served at all by the old health care system.
Obviously, Cuba cannot afford to devote so many of its medical personnel to Venezuela indefinitely, nor does the Chávez government want to depend on foreign doctors forever. So when Barrio Adentro was being launched in 2003, Cuban and Venezuelan medical experts devised a new program of medical education that will enable Venezuela to keep its universal public health program functioning permanently. Starting in 2005, the Cuban doctors were asked to perform a rigorous double duty: not only did they continue treating patients in Barrio Adentro clinics, but many of them also began teaching as professor/tutors for the MIC program in comprehensive community medicine. The goal of MIC is to integrate the training of family practitioners into the fabric of communities in a holistic effort that meets the medical needs of all citizens, makes use of local resources, and promotes preventive health care and healthy living.
The Cuban mission in Venezuela is possible because over the past half-century, Cuba has developed a vision of medical service that goes far beyond its own borders. Cuban health workers, in addition to providing free health care for all their fellow citizens, have transformed themselves into a “weapon of solidarity,” a revolutionary force that has been deployed in over 100 countries around the world. Since 2000, however, the Cuban commitment has increased substantially because the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela has contributed its own enthusiasm, volunteers, and economic resources. Through various agreements of cooperation, Cuba and Venezuela have embarked upon a number of projects in other fields such as education, agriculture, energy, and industrial development, and then have extended these cooperative ventures to other nations, particularly within ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, which includes Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador as well as the small Caribbean island nations of Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Of all these ambitious undertakings, delivering medical services is by far the most prominent. In order to extend universal health care to the poor and working classes in way that is compatible with the new, egalitarian vision of these societies, many more physicians are needed. With this in mind, Cuba is educating more doctors at home even as it trains tens of thousands in Venezuela. In 2008 there were 29,000 Cubans enrolled in medical school, plus nearly 24,000 foreign students (including more than one hundred students from the United States) studying at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana or at the schools of the New Program for the Training of Latin American Doctors that are located in four other provinces.
An Army in White Jackets
I first became aware of the magnitude of this medical revolution in 2004 on my first trip to Venezuela. When Dr. Yonel, a young Cuban dentist working in a barrio of Caracas, informed me there were more than 10,000 doctors working in Venezuela, I exclaimed, “Un ejército de medicos! An army of doctors!”
Dr. Yonel smiled and replied, “Un ejército de paz. An army ofpeace.”
Clearly the collaboration of the rejuvenated Cuban Revolution and the nascent Bolivarian Revolution was yielding impressive results. And a growing number of countries in the Western Hemisphere, long under the yoke of wealthy conservative minorities or military authoritarians who were dependent on capital and political instruction from the North, were no longer willing to listen to the United States when it told them to shun Cuba and Venezuela. Since its long-standing economic blockade of Cuba was failing to deter these developments, the United States tried to launch a disruptive dissident movement in Cuba and assist a coup d’état in Venezuela. When these efforts failed, the U.S. government imposed more draconian economic and travel restrictions on Cuba in 2004 and funded various schemes to undermine both revolutionary governments. In 2006, the United States stooped to an especially low level when it attempted to directly sabotage Cuba’s humanitarian medical missions by creating the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program. This was a law specifically designed to lure Cuban doctors, nurses, and technicians away from their foreign assignments by offering them special immigration status and speedy entry into the United States.
These antagonistic efforts did not succeed in diminishing the international solidarity and prestige that Cuba and Venezuela were acquiring around the world, nor did it keep them from expanding their programs of humanitarian medical aid and international medical education. In 2007, a young Chilean, a member of the third class graduating from the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, spoke at her commencement and told her classmates: “Today we are an army in white jackets that will bring good health and a little more dignity to our people.”
By 2010, Cuba and Venezuela further demonstrated their capabilities by being among the most prominent providers of both emergency and long-term aid to Haiti after its devastating earthquake. Brazil, the economic giant of Latin America, signaled its admiration by announcing that it would be delighted to join Cuba in a partnership to create a new public health system in Haiti. José Gomés, the Brazilian Minister of Health, explained why his country was choosing to work with the Cubans on such a significant and demanding project: “We have just signed an agreement—Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti—according to which all three countries make a commitment to unite our forces in order to reconstruct the health system in Haiti. . . . We will provide this, together with Cuba—a country with an extremely long internationalist experience, a great degree of technical ability, great determination, and an enormous amount of heart.”
For Cuba, Venezuela, and by extension their allies in ALBA alliance, these triumphs throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century were more than diplomatic coups, they were moral victories. They demonstrated the power of social solidarity and humanistic concern for other people, values in stark contrast with the materialistic, self-centered, and aggressive behavior of the advanced capitalist societies.
This book aims to acquaint the reader with the ways that revolutionary doctors and health care workers have developed into major protagonists of socialist change and are defining what that change should look like. Chapters 2 through 4 offer some glimpses of Cuba’s international medical missions, their profound impact on various parts of the world, and their relation to the overall development of Cuban health care over the past fifty years. Chapters 5 through 8 describe how a new public health system, Barrio Adentro, has been created in Venezuela, and how new Venezuelan doctors are being educated to assume responsibility for this system in the future. This description is based on my own observations of day-to-day interactions of doctors, medical students, health committees, and the members of the communities they serve. Finally, the last four chapters illustrate how capitalist cultures and imperialist forces are resisting the development of revolutionary medicine and revolutionary consciousness, while the emerging socialist cultures are pressing forward with new ideas and creating the patterns of practice and commitment in daily life that are producing the revolutionaries of the future.
Source: International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Revolutionary Doctors, a new book by author Steve Brouwer and published by Monthly Review Press, gives readers a first-hand account of Venezuela’s innovative and inspiring program of community health care, designed to serve—and largely carried out by—the poor themselves. Drawing on long-term participant observations as well as in-depth research, author Steve Brouwer tells the story of Venezuela’s Integral Community Medicine program, in which doctor-teachers move into the countryside and poor urban areas to recruit and train doctors from among peasants and workers.
The following excerpt, also available in PDF, was made available to readers through the International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
Where Do Revolutionary Doctors Come From?
The campesinos would have run, immediately and with unreserved enthusiasm, to help their brothers.
—CHE GUEVARA, “On Revolutionary Medicine,” 1960
Even though he came to Cuba with a rifle slung over his shoulder and entered Havana in 1959 as one of the victorious commanders of the Cuban Revolution, he still continued to think of himself as a doctor. Five years earlier, the twenty-five-year-old Argentine had arrived in Guatemala and offered to put his newly earned medical degree at the service of a peaceful social transformation. Dr. Ernesto Guevara was hoping to find work in the public health services and contribute to the wide-ranging reforms being initiated by President Arbenz, but he never had much opportunity to work as a physician in Guatemala. Within months of his arrival, Arbenz’s government was brought down by the military coup d’état devised by the United Fruit Company, some Guatemalan colonels, the U.S. State Department, and the CIA.
Che never lost sight of the value of his original aspiration—combining the humanitarian mission of medicine with the creation of a just society. When he addressed the Cuban militia on August 19, 1960, a year and a half after the triumph of the revolution, he chose to speak about “Revolutionary Medicine” and the possibility of educating a new kind of doctor.
“A few months ago, here in Havana, it happened that a group of newly graduated doctors did not want to go into the country’s rural areas and demanded remuneration before they would agree to go. . . .But what would have happened if instead of these boys, whose families generally were able to pay for their years of study, others of less fortunate means had just finished their schooling and were beginning the exercise of their profession? What would have occurred if two or three hundred campesinos had emerged, let us say by magic, from the university halls? What would have happened, simply, is that the campesinos would have run, immediately and with unreserved enthusiasm, to help their brothers.”
Since then, Cuban medicine and health services have been developed in a number of unique and revolutionary ways, but only now, nearly fifty years later, has Che’s dream come to full fruition. Today it is literally true that campesinos, along with the children of impoverished working-class and indigenous communities, are becoming doctors and running, “with unreserved enthusiasm, to help their brothers.”
While this is happening on the mountainsides of Haiti, among the Garifuna people on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, in the villages of Africa and the highlands of Bolivia, it is occurring on the grandest scale in the rural towns and city barrios of Venezuela. When I was living in the mountains of western Venezuela in 2007 and 2008, I witnessed the emergence of revolutionary doctors every morning as I walked out the door of our little tin-roofed house. The scene would have delighted Che:
As the sun rises above the mountain behind the village of Monte Carmelo and the white mist begins to lift off the cloud forest, four young campesinos walk along the road in their wine-red polo shirts with their crisp, white jackets folded up under their arms to protect them from the dust. At 7 a.m. they wave goodbye to the high school students who are waiting to begin their classes in three rooms at the women’s cooperative and then hop aboard the “taxi,” a tough, thirtyyear-old Toyota pickup truck that often packs twenty or more people in the back. They travel down the winding mountain road, through the deep ravine at the bottom, and up the hill on the far side of the valley to the larger town of Sanare, where they are going to work all morning alongside Cuban doctors in neighborhood consulting offices and the modern Diagnostic Clinic.
Around 7:45, four more medical students from the village, already donning their white jackets, walk by our house, past the plaza and the little church, and gather in front of a small concrete block building called the ambulatorio. About the same time, they are joined by three more medical students who emerge from Carlos’s bright blue jeep,“the Navigator,” one of the other vehicles in the taxi cooperative that serves the village. These students from Sanare pull on their white jackets, hug their compañeros, and wait for Elsy, a health committee volunteer who is studying to be a nurse, to unlock the gate to the ambulatorio, the walk-in clinic that offers Barrio Adentro medical service.
As I stroll by, I see the prospective patients sitting on the benches of the small, covered patio in front of the entrance door. They are waiting for Dr. Tomasa, the family medical specialist. Two chirpy teenage girls sit next to Dr. Raul’s dentistry room and grin with perfect-looking smiles. “What could be wrong with your teeth?” I ask.
“Nothing,” responds one of them, “Dr. Raul is giving us another checkup.” Another checkup? Their parents never had a single checkup when they were young—consequently, there are many people over forty or fifty who have very few teeth.
By 8 a.m. one of the medical students stands behind the simple wooden counter, performing receptionist duties. Another shuttles back and forth to the file shelves, organizing and updating medical information that is kept on every family in the community. A third chats informally with the waiting patients, entertaining their small children, and informally inquiring about their families’ health. The other four students stand alongside Dr. Tomasa in the consulting office, watching her take family and individual histories and give examinations. They also fetch medicines, take temperatures, and weigh healthy children who are accompanying their mothers. Today, like every day, Dr. Tomasa says to her students, “Por favor, more questions. This is how we learn. You can never ask too many questions.”
Monte Carmelo is a small village that stretches along a single paved road on a mountain ridge in the foothills of the Andes in the state of Lara. Before Hugo Chávez assumed the presidency of Venezuela in 1999, the road was unpaved and the high school did not exist. According to the 2007 census, its population consisted of 129 families and approximately 700 individuals, nearly all of them supporting themselves by working small parcels of land by hand, or with horses and oxen. That same year nine residents of Monte Carmelo were medical students. Eight were studying Medicina Integral Comunitaria (popularly known as MIC), an intensive six-year course that in English is usually called Comprehensive Community Medicine. A ninth village resident was studying medicine in Cuba. Two more young women from a neighboring hamlet were also in medical school. They were part of a group of sixty-seven students in this agricultural region who were becoming doctors of medicine.
The students are a diverse lot: some are nineteen or twenty years old and have recently finished high school; others are closer to thirty and have young children; a few are even older. Some young mothers have recently completed their secondary education through Mission Ribas, one of the Bolivarian social missions that bring adults back to school on evenings and weekends. All of the students are enthusiastic about their role in fostering good health and introducing reliable medical care into the fabric of their community and the larger world. And many of them dream of emulating their Cuban teachers and one day serving as internationalist physicians themselves in remote and impoverished parts of the world.
This experiment in training new doctors in MIC would be worthy of international attention even if the program was limited to the 67 students in this remote coffee-growing region in the state of Lara. But in fact they represent only a tiny fraction of a gigantic effort to transform medical education and health care delivery throughout all of Venezuela. Nearly 25,000 students were enrolled in the first four years of MIC in 2007 2008, and by 2009 and 2010 they were joined by more students, swelling the ranks of students enrolled in all six years of MIC to approximately 30,000. This is almost as many as the total number of doctors who were practicing medicine in all capacities in Venezuela when Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998.
One unique aspect of MIC is that the students in Monte Carmelo do not have to leave the campo, the countryside, nor do students in the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuelan cities have to desert their barrios in order to attend medical school. Medicina Integral Comunitaria is a “university without walls” that trains young doctors in their home environments. This is not a short-term course for health aides or “barefoot doctors,” but a rigorous program designed to produce a new kind of physician. Every morning during their years of study, the MIC students help doctors working in Barrio Adentro attend to patients’ illnesses and learn to comprehend the broad public health needs of their communities. And every afternoon, they meet with their MIC professors in a series of formal medical classes that constitute a rigorous curriculum and include all the medical sciences studied at traditional universities.
The MIC education program could not exist without Barrio Adentro, the nationwide health system that first began delivering primary care in 2003 thanks to an enormous commitment of expertise from Cuba. From 2004 to 2010, Barrio Adentro continually deployed between 10,000 and 14,000 Cuban doctors and 15,000 to 20,000 other Cuban medical personnel—dentists, nurses, physical therapists, optometrists, and technicians. Their services are available to all Venezuelans for free at almost 7,000 walk-in offices and over 500 larger diagnostic clinics, and they have been very effective in meeting the needs of 80 percent of the population that had been ill-served or not served at all by the old health care system.
Obviously, Cuba cannot afford to devote so many of its medical personnel to Venezuela indefinitely, nor does the Chávez government want to depend on foreign doctors forever. So when Barrio Adentro was being launched in 2003, Cuban and Venezuelan medical experts devised a new program of medical education that will enable Venezuela to keep its universal public health program functioning permanently. Starting in 2005, the Cuban doctors were asked to perform a rigorous double duty: not only did they continue treating patients in Barrio Adentro clinics, but many of them also began teaching as professor/tutors for the MIC program in comprehensive community medicine. The goal of MIC is to integrate the training of family practitioners into the fabric of communities in a holistic effort that meets the medical needs of all citizens, makes use of local resources, and promotes preventive health care and healthy living.
The Cuban mission in Venezuela is possible because over the past half-century, Cuba has developed a vision of medical service that goes far beyond its own borders. Cuban health workers, in addition to providing free health care for all their fellow citizens, have transformed themselves into a “weapon of solidarity,” a revolutionary force that has been deployed in over 100 countries around the world. Since 2000, however, the Cuban commitment has increased substantially because the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela has contributed its own enthusiasm, volunteers, and economic resources. Through various agreements of cooperation, Cuba and Venezuela have embarked upon a number of projects in other fields such as education, agriculture, energy, and industrial development, and then have extended these cooperative ventures to other nations, particularly within ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, which includes Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador as well as the small Caribbean island nations of Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Of all these ambitious undertakings, delivering medical services is by far the most prominent. In order to extend universal health care to the poor and working classes in way that is compatible with the new, egalitarian vision of these societies, many more physicians are needed. With this in mind, Cuba is educating more doctors at home even as it trains tens of thousands in Venezuela. In 2008 there were 29,000 Cubans enrolled in medical school, plus nearly 24,000 foreign students (including more than one hundred students from the United States) studying at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana or at the schools of the New Program for the Training of Latin American Doctors that are located in four other provinces.
An Army in White Jackets
I first became aware of the magnitude of this medical revolution in 2004 on my first trip to Venezuela. When Dr. Yonel, a young Cuban dentist working in a barrio of Caracas, informed me there were more than 10,000 doctors working in Venezuela, I exclaimed, “Un ejército de medicos! An army of doctors!”
Dr. Yonel smiled and replied, “Un ejército de paz. An army ofpeace.”
Clearly the collaboration of the rejuvenated Cuban Revolution and the nascent Bolivarian Revolution was yielding impressive results. And a growing number of countries in the Western Hemisphere, long under the yoke of wealthy conservative minorities or military authoritarians who were dependent on capital and political instruction from the North, were no longer willing to listen to the United States when it told them to shun Cuba and Venezuela. Since its long-standing economic blockade of Cuba was failing to deter these developments, the United States tried to launch a disruptive dissident movement in Cuba and assist a coup d’état in Venezuela. When these efforts failed, the U.S. government imposed more draconian economic and travel restrictions on Cuba in 2004 and funded various schemes to undermine both revolutionary governments. In 2006, the United States stooped to an especially low level when it attempted to directly sabotage Cuba’s humanitarian medical missions by creating the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program. This was a law specifically designed to lure Cuban doctors, nurses, and technicians away from their foreign assignments by offering them special immigration status and speedy entry into the United States.
These antagonistic efforts did not succeed in diminishing the international solidarity and prestige that Cuba and Venezuela were acquiring around the world, nor did it keep them from expanding their programs of humanitarian medical aid and international medical education. In 2007, a young Chilean, a member of the third class graduating from the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, spoke at her commencement and told her classmates: “Today we are an army in white jackets that will bring good health and a little more dignity to our people.”
By 2010, Cuba and Venezuela further demonstrated their capabilities by being among the most prominent providers of both emergency and long-term aid to Haiti after its devastating earthquake. Brazil, the economic giant of Latin America, signaled its admiration by announcing that it would be delighted to join Cuba in a partnership to create a new public health system in Haiti. José Gomés, the Brazilian Minister of Health, explained why his country was choosing to work with the Cubans on such a significant and demanding project: “We have just signed an agreement—Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti—according to which all three countries make a commitment to unite our forces in order to reconstruct the health system in Haiti. . . . We will provide this, together with Cuba—a country with an extremely long internationalist experience, a great degree of technical ability, great determination, and an enormous amount of heart.”
For Cuba, Venezuela, and by extension their allies in ALBA alliance, these triumphs throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century were more than diplomatic coups, they were moral victories. They demonstrated the power of social solidarity and humanistic concern for other people, values in stark contrast with the materialistic, self-centered, and aggressive behavior of the advanced capitalist societies.
This book aims to acquaint the reader with the ways that revolutionary doctors and health care workers have developed into major protagonists of socialist change and are defining what that change should look like. Chapters 2 through 4 offer some glimpses of Cuba’s international medical missions, their profound impact on various parts of the world, and their relation to the overall development of Cuban health care over the past fifty years. Chapters 5 through 8 describe how a new public health system, Barrio Adentro, has been created in Venezuela, and how new Venezuelan doctors are being educated to assume responsibility for this system in the future. This description is based on my own observations of day-to-day interactions of doctors, medical students, health committees, and the members of the communities they serve. Finally, the last four chapters illustrate how capitalist cultures and imperialist forces are resisting the development of revolutionary medicine and revolutionary consciousness, while the emerging socialist cultures are pressing forward with new ideas and creating the patterns of practice and commitment in daily life that are producing the revolutionaries of the future.
Source: International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Health workers march against privatization; call for meaningful health budget
Various health groups challenged the Aquino government to be true to its word of making health care accessible to the poor. In a dialogue with leaders of the Deparment of Health, Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) and the Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) led government hospital employees, doctors, nurses and other health professionals in seeking an end to privatization of health care delivery system. The group also demanded a P90B budget for health.
According to Jossel Ebesate, AHW National President, “As President Simeon Aquino prepares for his State of the Nation Address, he should remember and fulfill the promises he made as he assumed office a year ago. Foremost amongst these is to give utmost priority to the health of the people.”
The group noted that after one year, healthcare in the country has gone from bad to worse.
For instance, several state-run hospitals like the Philippine General Hospital and Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC) are already charging patients various additional fees that were not done during the previous administration. In PGH, even Class D patients who used to receive full support (full charity) are now being charged various rates ranging from P 20 to P340 for diagnostic and laboratory examinations, all of which were previously free. Similarly, at the POC, the new rates are more than double the previous rates.
The promise of universal health care has been reduced to expanded coverage of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), which remains a stop-gap measure. Doctors and nurses, still badly needed in the country, are not being employed properly with adequate remuneration. The RN HEALS program for nurses does not even provide nurses with the salary mandated by law and offers no real job security.
Worse, according to HEAD, the promotion of public-private partnerships by the Aquino administration has left public hospitals in a state of disrepair and neglect to justify the entry of private investments. Unfortunately, the poor and indigents patients are left to shoulder the burden.
Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD Secretary General, “Rather than promote the commercialization and sale of public hospitals, Aquino should stop the privatization of healthcare and provide a meaningful budget that allows public hospitals to fulfill their mandate of serving the underserved.”
“Enough of dole-outs and stopgap measures,” added Dr. Rivera. “President Aquino should stop the politics of palliatives and come up with long-term solulions that will address the roots of age-old problems in health.”###
According to Jossel Ebesate, AHW National President, “As President Simeon Aquino prepares for his State of the Nation Address, he should remember and fulfill the promises he made as he assumed office a year ago. Foremost amongst these is to give utmost priority to the health of the people.”
The group noted that after one year, healthcare in the country has gone from bad to worse.
For instance, several state-run hospitals like the Philippine General Hospital and Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC) are already charging patients various additional fees that were not done during the previous administration. In PGH, even Class D patients who used to receive full support (full charity) are now being charged various rates ranging from P 20 to P340 for diagnostic and laboratory examinations, all of which were previously free. Similarly, at the POC, the new rates are more than double the previous rates.
The promise of universal health care has been reduced to expanded coverage of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), which remains a stop-gap measure. Doctors and nurses, still badly needed in the country, are not being employed properly with adequate remuneration. The RN HEALS program for nurses does not even provide nurses with the salary mandated by law and offers no real job security.
Worse, according to HEAD, the promotion of public-private partnerships by the Aquino administration has left public hospitals in a state of disrepair and neglect to justify the entry of private investments. Unfortunately, the poor and indigents patients are left to shoulder the burden.
Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD Secretary General, “Rather than promote the commercialization and sale of public hospitals, Aquino should stop the privatization of healthcare and provide a meaningful budget that allows public hospitals to fulfill their mandate of serving the underserved.”
“Enough of dole-outs and stopgap measures,” added Dr. Rivera. “President Aquino should stop the politics of palliatives and come up with long-term solulions that will address the roots of age-old problems in health.”###
Friday, June 3, 2011
Three years of Cheaper Medicine Law has not made drugs affordable
Three years after the Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicines Act of 2008 (Republic Act 9502) was signed, essential drugs are still neither assessable nor affordable to ordinary Filipinos.
Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) today criticized the Aquino administration for perpetuating “an anemic implementation of an already watered-down law”.
Citing a 2009 study by Health Action Information Network on medicine prices and availability in the Philippines, “standard treatments with these (brand-name drugs) require several days’ up to a weeks’ worth of wages”, said Dr. Geneve E. Rivera, secretary-general of Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD).
According to the same study, “generic medicines in private facilities may be unaffordable too, requiring several days’ wages to purchase.”
“Treatment courses using generic medicines in public facilities are generally affordable based on the salary of the lowest paid government worker. However, many Filipinos earn less than this wage and that managing an illness entails other costs that may eventually render even the lowest-cost treatments unaffordable.”
HEAD believes that the Aquino government has not done enough to regulate the practices of multinational drug companies. These companies have had their way in dictating drug prices, which are often three-to-four times more than prices in other countries.
“How can the Cheaper Medicine Law have any real impact when the monopoly of big transnational pharmaceutical in the drug industry continues?” said Dr. Rivera.
The health group also believes that essential steps in establishing a national, a truly Filipino drug industry must be undertaken.
“While the immediate goal is to put an end to the monopoly pricing that has kept our people captive for decades, the more long-term goal is to institutionalize fundamental changes in the entire drug industry because this is the only way to ensure affordable and accessible medicine.” added Dr. Rivera. ###
Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) today criticized the Aquino administration for perpetuating “an anemic implementation of an already watered-down law”.
Citing a 2009 study by Health Action Information Network on medicine prices and availability in the Philippines, “standard treatments with these (brand-name drugs) require several days’ up to a weeks’ worth of wages”, said Dr. Geneve E. Rivera, secretary-general of Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD).
According to the same study, “generic medicines in private facilities may be unaffordable too, requiring several days’ wages to purchase.”
“Treatment courses using generic medicines in public facilities are generally affordable based on the salary of the lowest paid government worker. However, many Filipinos earn less than this wage and that managing an illness entails other costs that may eventually render even the lowest-cost treatments unaffordable.”
HEAD believes that the Aquino government has not done enough to regulate the practices of multinational drug companies. These companies have had their way in dictating drug prices, which are often three-to-four times more than prices in other countries.
“How can the Cheaper Medicine Law have any real impact when the monopoly of big transnational pharmaceutical in the drug industry continues?” said Dr. Rivera.
The health group also believes that essential steps in establishing a national, a truly Filipino drug industry must be undertaken.
“While the immediate goal is to put an end to the monopoly pricing that has kept our people captive for decades, the more long-term goal is to institutionalize fundamental changes in the entire drug industry because this is the only way to ensure affordable and accessible medicine.” added Dr. Rivera. ###
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Government created the nursing exodus; Ona’s comment exposes government’s lack of plans for health workers
The group Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) today criticized the remarks of health secretary Enrique Ona for discouraging students from study nursing and for blaming parents for the glut in the nursing profession.
Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD secretary general said “conveniently reducing the problem of nursing employment as a matter of shifting academic preferences reveals how myopic the government sees the issue; it is a tactless commentary that exposes the lack of leadership and vision in terms of developing the country’s health human resources.”
Secretary Ona told graduating students in Baguio City that Instead of contributing to the over 200,000 jobless nurses nationwide, parents and students should “try courses related to mathematics, engineering and science and technology which command high compensations in both the local and international scenes”.
But HEAD said that it is government’s relentless policy of peddling nurses abroad that created the monstrous problem of unemployment now.
“It is, in fact, government, in to keep up with its labor export policy, which practically transformed the nursing profession into an overnight industry to keep the fledgling economy afloat. Like the past Arroyo administration, the current Aquino administration continues to facilitate the steady supply of nurses for deployment abroad.”
The health group holds the Aquino leadership accountable for the current unemployment of around 200,000 nurses all over the country.
“The problem is not the choice of nursing as a profession. The problem is when the Aquino government still refuses to employ nurses even though they are badly needed by the public healthcare system. The problem is when the Aquino government refuses to provide a viable career and personal future for nurses by denying them their due compensation.”
HEAD estimates that the government needs to augment its current nursing personnel by an additional 60% in order achieve the recommended nurse to patient ratio. Currently, there only about 28,000 nurses employed in both public and private hospitals in the country, and an additional 40,000 more are needed.
The group also notes that despite the recent approved increase of P22 in ECOLA (emergency cost of living allowance), government nurses still do not benefit from the wage provisions of the Nursing Act of 2002 and are barely surviving from severely inadequate salaries.
“The problem of the nursing employment also reflects the Aquino government’s priorities in terms of health services let alone its care for healthcare providers,” Rivera added. “Its RN Heals (Registered Nurses for Health Enhancement And Local Service) a mere slipshod one year temporary volunteer work without full compensation and benefits.”
“This is not pagbabago (change) but a mere rehash of what was already rotten before.”
Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD secretary general said “conveniently reducing the problem of nursing employment as a matter of shifting academic preferences reveals how myopic the government sees the issue; it is a tactless commentary that exposes the lack of leadership and vision in terms of developing the country’s health human resources.”
Secretary Ona told graduating students in Baguio City that Instead of contributing to the over 200,000 jobless nurses nationwide, parents and students should “try courses related to mathematics, engineering and science and technology which command high compensations in both the local and international scenes”.
But HEAD said that it is government’s relentless policy of peddling nurses abroad that created the monstrous problem of unemployment now.
“It is, in fact, government, in to keep up with its labor export policy, which practically transformed the nursing profession into an overnight industry to keep the fledgling economy afloat. Like the past Arroyo administration, the current Aquino administration continues to facilitate the steady supply of nurses for deployment abroad.”
The health group holds the Aquino leadership accountable for the current unemployment of around 200,000 nurses all over the country.
“The problem is not the choice of nursing as a profession. The problem is when the Aquino government still refuses to employ nurses even though they are badly needed by the public healthcare system. The problem is when the Aquino government refuses to provide a viable career and personal future for nurses by denying them their due compensation.”
HEAD estimates that the government needs to augment its current nursing personnel by an additional 60% in order achieve the recommended nurse to patient ratio. Currently, there only about 28,000 nurses employed in both public and private hospitals in the country, and an additional 40,000 more are needed.
The group also notes that despite the recent approved increase of P22 in ECOLA (emergency cost of living allowance), government nurses still do not benefit from the wage provisions of the Nursing Act of 2002 and are barely surviving from severely inadequate salaries.
“The problem of the nursing employment also reflects the Aquino government’s priorities in terms of health services let alone its care for healthcare providers,” Rivera added. “Its RN Heals (Registered Nurses for Health Enhancement And Local Service) a mere slipshod one year temporary volunteer work without full compensation and benefits.”
“This is not pagbabago (change) but a mere rehash of what was already rotten before.”
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
HEAD joins call against use of nuclear reactors; hits Aquino for lack of contingency on Japan nuke leak
Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) joins the international day of protest against the use of nuclear power reactors and nuclear power. The protest also commemorates the 25th anniversary of the tragic Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It is, likewise, a protest against concealing the effects and extent of the ongoing nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant in Japan.
According to Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD’S secretary general, the group joins the call for the banning of nuclear power plants all over the world. Rivera said what happened to Chernobyl years ago and the ongoing multiple meltdown of Fukushima tells us that man-made nuclear energy is never at all safe and continues to pose a danger to the environment and to the health of the peoples of the world.
“We also call on the peoples of the world to pressure the Japanese and other governments to dismantle their nuclear facilities and to consider, instead, other safer energy sources. The threat posed by the meltdown of Fukushima nuclear reactors is not just on the Japanese people but also a threat to the rest of the world if the nuclear radiation leaks continue to spread further.“ As already reported, weeks ago, the level of nuclear disaster has risen to the highest, which is level 7 of the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).
Likewise, HEAD together with other health professionals, health workers and health science students urges the Japanese government to immediately secure the safety of its citizens, especially the women, children and the elderly. The Japanese government must also address this disaster with transparency of the real situation and stop playing down the extent of the nuclear material that spread out in the atmosphere, sea waters and land which poses danger to the health of the people especially the children.
Studies from other countries show that this fall out must have reached the Philippines at this time yet the Aquino administration has ineptly address the danger that this poses to our people. It chooses to downplay the situation instead of making the people ready for the looming disaster.
“In the case of nuclear fallout, the economically disadvantaged countries like the Philippines will greatly suffer and given our dire economic situation majority of poverty stricken Filipinos will become more vulnerable more than ever” Rivera said.
Furthermore, the group said that the government has not made any concrete plans and countermeasures except for its inept monitoring, limited advisories and plans of bulk buying large amount of iodine to counter the possible effects of radioactive poisoning. The group assails the lack of contingency plans of having other sources of water and food in case our water system becomes contaminated.
Due to the nuclear radiation, death can ensue and there will be an increase in diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, cholera, meningitis and different forms of cancer, cataracts, perinatal deaths and severe skin diseases.
With a measly budget for health, the more the government will not be able to respond to the health needs arising from the nuclear fallout.
“Finally, we enjoin the Filipino citizenry to get involved in protesting the use of nuclear reactors” Rivera ended.
According to Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD’S secretary general, the group joins the call for the banning of nuclear power plants all over the world. Rivera said what happened to Chernobyl years ago and the ongoing multiple meltdown of Fukushima tells us that man-made nuclear energy is never at all safe and continues to pose a danger to the environment and to the health of the peoples of the world.
“We also call on the peoples of the world to pressure the Japanese and other governments to dismantle their nuclear facilities and to consider, instead, other safer energy sources. The threat posed by the meltdown of Fukushima nuclear reactors is not just on the Japanese people but also a threat to the rest of the world if the nuclear radiation leaks continue to spread further.“ As already reported, weeks ago, the level of nuclear disaster has risen to the highest, which is level 7 of the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).
Likewise, HEAD together with other health professionals, health workers and health science students urges the Japanese government to immediately secure the safety of its citizens, especially the women, children and the elderly. The Japanese government must also address this disaster with transparency of the real situation and stop playing down the extent of the nuclear material that spread out in the atmosphere, sea waters and land which poses danger to the health of the people especially the children.
Studies from other countries show that this fall out must have reached the Philippines at this time yet the Aquino administration has ineptly address the danger that this poses to our people. It chooses to downplay the situation instead of making the people ready for the looming disaster.
“In the case of nuclear fallout, the economically disadvantaged countries like the Philippines will greatly suffer and given our dire economic situation majority of poverty stricken Filipinos will become more vulnerable more than ever” Rivera said.
Furthermore, the group said that the government has not made any concrete plans and countermeasures except for its inept monitoring, limited advisories and plans of bulk buying large amount of iodine to counter the possible effects of radioactive poisoning. The group assails the lack of contingency plans of having other sources of water and food in case our water system becomes contaminated.
Due to the nuclear radiation, death can ensue and there will be an increase in diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, cholera, meningitis and different forms of cancer, cataracts, perinatal deaths and severe skin diseases.
With a measly budget for health, the more the government will not be able to respond to the health needs arising from the nuclear fallout.
“Finally, we enjoin the Filipino citizenry to get involved in protesting the use of nuclear reactors” Rivera ended.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Health group opposes MRT/LRT fare hike
The group Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) today urged the people to unite and strongly oppose plans by the Aquino government to raise fares in the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) systems by March 1, 2011. This increase will push through despite massive opposition from various sectors during “public consultations” with government officials.
“Is the concern of the Aquino administration for the plight of the poor mere rhetoric? The MRT/LRT fare hike plan seems to say so,” Dr. Geneve Rivera, HEAD secretary general said. “This fare is on top of other increases in prices of petroleum products and basic services like electricity, and will be a tremendous addition to the daily costs of living. The heaviest burden will be on daily wage earners who barely get the minimum wage but have to go to work every day.”
According to HEAD, the MRT and LRT have a combined average of about a million riders per day. Aside from students, most of these riders are employees and blue collar workers who suffer the daily grind of these trips in order to make ends meet. That is why in many countries, essential social services like mass public transport systems necessarily require government subsidies and are not meant to be profitable.
“However, the fare hike is actually meant to showcase the profitability of the mass rail transport systems so as to attractive more potential buyers,” added Dr. Rivera. “The fare hike is actually a step in Aquino’s policy of greater privatization.”
“Because of this privatization policy, public infrastructures like the MRT and LRT operate to gain profit and not to provide public service to the public. Worse, the bulk of so-called losses being shouldered by the government are actually payments for guaranteed profits in the form of ‘equity rental payments’, and for the loans incurred by the Metro Rail Transit Corporation (MRTC) when it built the MRT under a 25-year ‘build-lease-transfer’ (BLT) scheme in 1997. The BLT contract guaranteed the consortium a 15% rate of profit.”
“In this regard, the government of PNoy is no different from past regimes. It makes public utilities milking cow for the profiteering of private companies. It puts the economic burden of neoliberal policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on those who are already suffering much: the poor.”
HEAD insists that instead of raising MRT/LRT fares, the Aquino regime should review the lopsided BOT/BLT contract and rescind it with the public welfare in mind.
“In light of the current economic crisis and already difficult social conditions, it is unacceptable for the Aquino regime to sell off the few remaining state assets at the expense of the people he vowed to serve.” Dr. Rivera concluded. The health group urged Filipinos to vigorously oppose the unjustifiable MRT/LRT fare hike plan and make the Aquino administration accountable for its anti-people, pro-big business measures.
HEALTH ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY(HEAD)
2/F Doña Anita Bldg, 284 E. Rodriguez Ave., Quezon City
Telefax: (02) 725 4760 Email: headphil@gmail.com
Reference :
Dr. Geneve Rivera, Secretary-General
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