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DOH to bring health services closer to people via telemedicine

By Ma. Teresa Montemayor

July 26, 2022, 7:11 pm

<p><strong>HEALTHCARE SERVICES</strong>. Department of Health (DOH) Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire joins the panel discussion during the post-State of the Nation Address economic briefing at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City on Tuesday (July 26, 2022). She said the DOH plans to establish telemedicine or telehealth services across the country in response to Marcos’ SONA directive to bring healthcare services closer to the people.<em> (PNA photo by Avito Dalan)</em></p>

HEALTHCARE SERVICES. Department of Health (DOH) Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire joins the panel discussion during the post-State of the Nation Address economic briefing at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City on Tuesday (July 26, 2022). She said the DOH plans to establish telemedicine or telehealth services across the country in response to Marcos’ SONA directive to bring healthcare services closer to the people. (PNA photo by Avito Dalan)

MANILA – The Department of Health plans to establish telemedicine or telehealth services across the country in response to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s directive in his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday to bring healthcare services closer to the people.

During the post-SONA economic briefing at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City on Tuesday, Department of Health Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said dynamic provision of healthcare services must gear toward technology and innovations and not just rely on the usual approaches to prepare for future emergencies or pandemic.

“We’re going to establish further our telemedicine services or telehealth services so that we can continuously decongest our facilities and we can also reach those far-flung areas in the country,” she said.

Specialty care facilities and primary care facilities in different regions of the country would also be established for Filipinos to have improved access to high-level healthcare facilities.

She said the DOH aims to base all its decisions and instructions to local government units on scientific data and evidence through strengthened epidemiology and surveillance units.

“That is already part of the budget that we have proposed to the Department of Budget and Management for the Department of Health,” Vergeire said.

Scientific evidence generation and recommendations must come from experts in the field, she said.

“In support of the directives of the President, we’re going to have the Philippine Center for Disease Control whereby we’re going to have high level technical capacity, hiring experts, hiring scientists so that we can be able to better manage emerging and re-emerging diseases,” she said.

To prepare for the threat of emerging and re-emerging like Covid-19, she said the DOH plans to facilitate early diagnosis by setting up public health laboratories focusing on different diseases.

In terms of logistics and commodities, Vergeire said self-sufficiency is important especially in times of pandemic.

“We all know that our vaccines, for example, for Covid-19, came internationally. We don’t have our local source. So in line also with the directives of the President, we are in support to work with the Department of Science and Technology to set up the Virology Institute of the Philippines, whereby, eventually, we can be able to locally manufacture our technologies, such as vaccines for these specific infectious diseases,” she said.

Improved healthcare facilities and services would be futile if there are not enough medical professionals to man and deliver them respectively.

“If there are emergencies or this kind of pandemic of this scale, there should be a pool of medical personnel that we can easily tap from and that they can easily supplement the different needs for healthcare workers or health human resources across the different facilities of government and the private sector as well,” she added.

As for the planned improvements in the health sector, she said the DOH underscores the importance of a governance mechanism through an inter-agency task force.

Vergeire said the task force must be able to manage the first two levels of response of the country in case of emergencies and pandemics.

She added the National Risk Reduction and Management Council must also have an institutionalized system or organization to appropriately implement the policy directions from the task force. (PNA)

 

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