BUDGET DELIBERATION. Department of Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa answers queries during the plenary debates on the agency’s 2025 budget at the Senate in Pasay City on Nov. 20, 2024. Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said the DOH has received a PHP267.8 billion budget for this year, the biggest in its history, under the current administration. (PNA photo by Avito Dalan)
MANILA – President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. wants quality health services to be accessible to all Filipinos, particularly those living in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas.
Therefore, Marcos’ management guarantees that the Department of Health (DOH) will be able to provide fitness without any interruption.
In a Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon interview, Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said the DOH has received a PHP267.8 billion budget for this year, the biggest in its history, under the current administration.
“Technically, ‘yung sinasabi niyang ‘wag kayong mag-alala sa kalusugan, nilalagyan niya talaga ng budget (Technically, he allotted budget for health when he told the public not to worry about their health),” he said.
He noted that Marcos has legacy projects such as cancer and children’s centers with funds to ensure their construction.
“PBBM puts its money into what it says. Kapag sinabi niyang dagdagan ng pondo ang kalusugan, dinagdagan niya ang pondo (He raised the fitness fund when he said he would),” he added.
After the signing of the 2025 national budget in December last year, Marcos asked Herbosa to ensure the provision of fitness benefits to all members of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) despite the absence of subsidy government to the public insurer.
Coming out of the pandemic, the DOH encountered challenges in nutrition, immunization, maternal mortality, tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis, non-communicable diseases like diabetes and hypertension, mental health, cancer and digitization of the health system.
To combat these diseases, the Herbosa firm is focusing its efforts on fitness promotion, disease prevention, and acute and emergency care.
The Ministry of Health has opened 42 urgent care and ambulatory services (BUCAS) centers in Bagong to provide the most productive emergency and outpatient care to the poorest families.
Twenty of those centers are in Luzon, 8 in Visayas and 14 in Mindanao. They are open from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. m. to 10 p. m. m.
Herbosa said that family members and doctors from the network were assigned to the centers.
Free basic fitness is offered through 83 cell clinics in Bagong Pilipinas (New Philippines), equipped with complete devices such as virtual X-ray, scanner, ultrasound, hematology analyzer for blood tests, binocular microscope, ophthalmoscope for eye examinations and laboratory. -Quality refrigerator. and telemedicine devices
Several hospitals are also up for expansion, Herbosa said, citing as an example the multi-specialty center built in Clark, Pampanga.
“We are expanding many hospitals: centers, specialized centers in the Pilipinas region, utos ni President ‘yan (on a national scale, it is the order of the president). Gagayahin’yung ating bituka dyan hospitals in the Northern Triangle, in all likelihood lungs, kidneys, centers and youth (We will mirror those hospitals in the Northern Triangle: lung, kidney, center and youth hospitals) Una’yung sa (the first one is). in) Clark,” he said. (OTP)