Press Release
September 12, 2008

Barangay health workers indispensable -- Loren

The big stride in medicine and health care services has not made barangay health workers obsolescent and irrelevant. On the contrary, their importance in the entire chain of health care delivery is more magnified now.

Senator Loren Legarda made this remark yesterday, even as she promised to attend to the pressing problems hounding the country's barangay health workers with regards to their meager honorarium and tough working conditions.

The country's health care personnel are one of the most dedicated sectors in the government bureaucracy but are often underpaid, hence many of them prefer to go abroad instead to seek quality life.

"Yet, many of the professionals are staying put, especially in far-flung areas, to become our unsung heroes laboring in obscurity under the toughest of working conditions," said Legarda.

"You are the true heroes of our health delivery system," Legarda told participants of the Barangay Health Workers Annual Convention yesterday at the Vicente De Lara Park in Cagayan De Oro City.

Theme of the convention graced by Misamis Orriental Governor Oscar Moreno was "Barangay Health Workers haligi ng Misamis Oriental."

Legarda also said she will push for the passage of law that would give every barangay health worker a Salary Grade 10 minimum pay and mandatory Christmas bonus.

"Of course, this is just a small gesture. It is not even commensurate to the big and inspired job you have been performing, which is delivering frontline health service at the grass roots level," said Legarda.

Legarda also revealed that she is giving strong considerations to pushing amendments to the Magna Carta for Public Health Workers, and that she said she has already instructed her legislative staff to prepare everything for that purpose.

"The nation's health care delivery system will founder and falter at the grass roots without the inspired and dedicated work of the barangay health workers," she said.

The job of barangay health workers draws from a long and rich tradition. It has been a fixture of our barangays from the time a sense and semblance of a formal community was put in place.

Mass vaccination, family planning lessons, the monitoring of disease outbreaks, the dissemination of health information and the posting of health advisory bulletins and many other tings are now part of the job portfolio of barangay health workers, Legarda said.

Despite all these, Legarda said there seems to be "utter neglect" on this indispensable sector, saying very little allocation goes to health.

News Latest News Feed