Tender loving care for health care workers

By this time, there is no denying we have to live with the fact that our battle against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic would be a day-to-day continuing battle. This is the reality we have to face even after the world’s biggest and most advanced pharmaceutical multinational companies have already developed vaccines that could provide us immunity against severe cases of COVID-19 infection.

Even then, thousands of Filipino health care workers (HCWs) and the uniformed personnel of the Philippine National Police (PNP) deputized by the National Task Force (NTF) to enforce the quarantine protocols have succumbed to the deadly flu-like COVID-19 infection. Their dangerous tasks got a notch higher with the emergence of more transmissible foreign variants of COVID-19 while leading on the grounds the battle against the spread of the pandemic since it broke out in March last year.

So, I could not agree more with PNP Director General Guillermo Eleazar and Ang Probinsyano party-list Rep. Alfred delos Santos who were our featured guests in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay via Zoom Webinar. Speaking in our weekly virtual news forum last Wednesday, both our guests supported our COVID-19 frontliners’ cry for prompt government pay out of their deserved risks benefits if we are to succeed in this campaign to stop the spread of the pandemic in our country.

Rep. Delos Santos reiterated his call to his fellow lawmakers to press upon the timely release of financial and medical benefits to HCWs specifically allocated for them during this public health emergency period. One of the two Ang Probinsiyano party-list representatives, Delos Santos is the first to raise about the plight of thousands of our HCWs who have yet to receive their hazard pay since December last year.

By way of trivia, I just found out Ang Probinsyano and Probinsyano Ako are two distinct party list representatives in the 18th Congress. Delos Santos and party-list Rep. Ronnie Ong both belong to Ang Probinsyano. Ironically, their namesake party list Probinsyano Ako Rep. Jose C. Singson Jr. is the chairman of the House committee on public accounts. But the three of them belong to the House coalition majority bloc. Go figure.

A member of House committee on accounts, Delos Santos deplored during the hearing about the delayed payout of this form of ayuda to our HCWs. This came to light following the protest pickets held at the DOH office in Manila. The 29-year old congressman could only picture in his mind the anguish, if not frustration of HCWs while performing their duties in the face of resurgence of COVID-19 cases here. He is, after all, the primary author of the Mental Health Wellness Act approved into law by President Rodrigo Duterte.

Undaunted by the resurgence of COVID cases, the more militant groups of HCWs took the streets out of obvious desperation – if only to dramatize their grievances. Other affected HCWs are now contemplating mass resignations from their respective hospitals in both private and government-run medical facilities.

Called as special risks allowance (SRA), the 18th Congress provided funds in Bayanihan to Heal As One Law initially to pay out this hazard pay for HCWs serving in COVID-19 wards in public hospitals. Upon appeal of HCWs in private hospitals, our lawmakers provided additional funds to the Department of Health (DOH) to include them in Bayanihan-2 or the Bayanihan to Recover as One Law. The House committee on public accounts conducted last Tuesday a public hearing on the several Resolutions, one of which was filed by Delos Santos to look into complaints of unpaid SRA.

Delos Santos disclosed he met beforehand with the leaders of various nurses groups in a bid to stave off a looming situation that could become a crisis in our public health system amid the latest surges in COVID-19 cases across the country. Like many lawmakers, Delos Santos could not help but blame much the DOH for this delayed release of the SRAs to our HCWs.

Delos Santos noted with extreme dismay after the DOH, in turn, pointed to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), not them, caused the delayed releases of SRAs. Amid the finger-pointing, Delos Santos believes the buck stops at the DOH as the government agency directly downloading the SRA releases either to the government hospitals or the local government units (LGUs).

Sadly, the DOH recorded 103 HCWs have died in the line of duty due to COVID-19 since March last year. Or this is about or 0.5% of 22,587 HCWs who tested positive for COVID infection. But one life lost is one life too many. The 22,217 of them recovered, which places the recovery rate at 98.4%.

Yet, our HCWs belong to the A-1 priority group who got inoculated since the first delivery this year of the anti-COVID vaccines.

Delos Santos could only praise the PNP headed by its incumbent head, Gen. Eleazar, for instituting timely and effective payout of extra hazard pay to policemen assigned to COVID-19 related duties. Speaking for the PNP, Gen. Eleazar credited his predecessors in the better system being followed now at the police organization that ensure prompt delivery of these benefits to uniformed personnel exposed to the dangers of COVID-19 infection.

According to the country’s top cop, a good number of the 200,000-man strong PNP has been deployed to field assignments and duties. They are all exposed directly with “unseen enemy” called COVID-19 infection, especially asymptomatic carriers of the virus.

This is why, the PNP chief pointed out, they aim to vaccinate all the personnel in Metro Manila, being the COVID-19 hot spot in the country by the end of this month. Nationwide, he disclosed, around 83,324 PNP personnel were already fully vaccinated, with 97,363 have received their first dose while 41,482 personnel still remain unvaccinated.

The hard realities on the ground are difficult enough. So decisive actions and tender loving care – not finger-pointing to meet the dire needs of our frontliners in fighting against COVID-19 pandemic.