COVID czar – Part 2

A few observations that I just like to point out to the IATF and to the city leadership. First is if you have a major policy decision to make affecting the general public such as enforcing a lockdown or cancelling quarantine passes, can you please not make it in the dead of night and have some alternative plans? If you cannot provide them with basic provisions, can you please give them the opportunity to buy it for themselves? I heard complaints about sick people having run out of medicine and supplies, or families having no time to buy food or withdraw money or even healthcare frontliners stranded at work having no transportation to go home. This is not just a mere inconvenience on the part of those affected. Your drastic measures could cost lives too.

Second, the community must be involved in this do-over. Each member of a sitio or barangay, whether with high coronavirus cases or not, should feel that they play a huge and vital role in minimizing new cases and deaths. It is very easy and sometimes just a lazy excuse to point the lack of social distancing and the lack of discipline among the Cebuanos as reasons for the surge we are experiencing now. But let us also ask why and address their concerns. Unemployment, lack of resources, living conditions, poor information and education dissemination and even the weather could very well affect the community's compliance with social distancing guidelines.

What I suggest now is to include a community organizer as part of the new team. One who is from the medical or nursing profession and who has the training, knowledge and skills in making the grassroots community understand the seriousness of this pandemic. As a nurse myself, I know several other fellow nurses and doctors who are very capable and willing to serve in this role.

Third, it is said that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Please protect our healthcare frontliners. All of them are tired, afraid, and isolated from their families but still continue to do their jobs with full dedication to their sworn duty to serve. Let us protect their health and well-being by providing them with appropriate PPEs, robust and timely compensation, reasonable working hours and conditions, free hotel and transportation assistance, mental health support, and whatever other services they need. With Philippine healthcare workers having one of the highest death incidences in the world, it is unacceptable that more should die because their government failed to take care of them. One life lost is too many.