Health agenda

THOUGHTS UNLIMITED
Eugene Balitang

LAGAWE, Ifugao -- With politics fast becoming the popular topic in the corner-store and in our favorite coffee hole, our well-meaning coffee buddies often ask what would be our main focus if elected (you can guess what hehe). Without losing a breath, we always say: economy, education and health.

Yes, health is an indispensable part of our 3-point agenda. We will approach this on the extreme: prevention of illness on one end and cure on the other end. As we try to prevent illness from happening, we should be ready to have the cure when the illness happens.

Prevention is intimately intertwined with our two agenda (Economy and Education). The main reason for our malnourished kids and our susceptibility to illness is our poverty. Poor families concentrate on the basic necessities; alas, nutrition needs (e.g. milk, eggs, vitamins) are not in their purchase list. A simple flu or an ordinary cough will metamorphose into more complicated illnesses as even the most common medicines for these ordinary illnesses are beyond the financial reach of our poor folks.

Compounding our poverty is our "lack of education." Our educational system has stuck to the traditional 3Rs (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic) and nothing more. Knowledge on basic hygiene is as foreign as a man from Mars. On this note, our plan is to continue with the AYYOD and ILHZ programs of Gov. Teddy, but with emphasis on the re-training of Barangay Health Workers (BHW) and Barangay Nutrition Scholars (BNS) as forefronts in "preventive health care." We shall establish barangay health clinics (if funds are available), extend financial and technical support to our Rural Health Units (RHU) in coordination with our municipal LCEs, and establish a working "botika sa barangay" in far-flung barangays in coordination with our senior citizen groups (so they'll have something to occupy their time apart from staging rallies at the provincial capitol compound hehe).

Cure, on the other hand, will entail the conversion of the Ifugao General Hospital (IGH) into the much-touted State-Of-The-Art-Hospital (SOTAH) that had recently highlighted the “rift” between our Provincial Chief Executive and our Sangguniang Panlalawigan. But, on this score, we would rather focus first on improving the management of IGH than in building a bigger hospital building.

Apart from our outspoken Machiavellian approach of systematically closing all the other six provincial hospitals in order that we can concentrate our meager provincial health funds on one SOTAH, we are actually toying with the idea of operating our IGH as an economic enterprise (much like Benguet General Hospital). Or, we shall convert the IGH as a sort of Government-Owned-or-Controlled Corporation (GOCC) where the Provincial Government is the majority shareholder and we open the minority shares to the public.

The affairs of the IGH will be managed by a 7-member board of directors where the Governor and the Provincial Health Officer are ex-oficio members; the rest of the members of the board shall be elected at large by the shareholders other than the PLGU. There would be an element of profit-making in this scheme, but we shall institutionalize a system where the "profit" will be plowed back to subsidize charity patients and wards. But then, if we get elected… Let’s dream on.