Health Workers to the UN: Be a true instrument to end social injustice, and attain health for all

Press Release
17 September 2013

Reference:

Mr. Jossel I. Ebesate, RN

National President

Alliance of Health Workers

Philippines

Contact No: +63-918-9276381

Today, September 17, 2013, marks the opening of the 68^th Annual session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly where 193 member countries meet “to discuss the steps necessary to improve issues of people everywhere” and at a time when there is widespread and deepening social ills and injustices.

For 68 years, these world leaders who compose this deliberative policy making and organ representative of the United  Nations gather once a year to discuss vital  issues such as poverty, peace, security, human rights, health and disease, inequality and environment”. At this time, world economic  crisis has worsened and health and health care have been directed more by economic policies which are geared towards profit generation.

 The Alliance of Health Workers in solidarity with the Global Nurses United's Global Day of Action, condemns the worsening Philippine health situation brought about by government policies which make the delivery of health services more inaccessible and anti-people. The Aquino government remained numb to the people’s protests against its centerpiece program - the Public Private Partnership including the delivery of health services which essentially privatizes public hospitals and public health services.  This further deprives the poor of the much needed services. The privatization of health has began during the Marcos era and has continued throughout the years, with the Philippine governments having the same template though with different names. Now the Aquino’s Universal Health Care is composed of strategies of health insurance and privatization of public hospitals and other health services. This is nothing but a final step towards the abandonment of state responsibility for people’s health.

With this profit- orientation, it follows that the health workers’ working conditions, wages and benefits have gone from bad to worst. The nurses and health workers suffer from long hours of duty and unjust work overload. The nurse to patient ratio is in average of 1 nurse to 30-40 patients in medical or surgical wards or even up to 100-250 patients in psychiatric wards. There is severe understaffing, with one health worker – a utility worker (UW) covering 2-3 wards, which normally should be covered by 3-6 UWs.  The contractualization, in various forms, which violates the right of any health worker to his/her right to security of tenure, just compensation and benefits, has been a national phenomenon. There are government nurses who are under “job orders” for 3-5 years or has been “casual employees” for 20 years.

“The World Health Organization, as  the trusted authority in directing and coordinating health issues within the United Nations' structure (WHO), should assist developing countries like the Philippines in “attaining the highest possible level of health” through programs which are appropriate and relevant. Like the Health for All by the year 2000, the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) of the UN together with the IMF-WB, which are said to be a set of development targets for the poor by 2015, is most likely to fail. With less than 1000 days to go, the goal to reduce maternal mortality for example, is very far from the target of 52 per 100,000/live births.

Considering that policies and programs imposed by international financial institutions, i.e. IMF/WB/ADB, are primarily geared for the benefits of big business rather than real development of the people, the Filipinos and other developing countries can never have a healthy living with the worsening economic and political situation that further deprived of them of their right to health. The top down approach to “development” as viewed by big business and being promoted and implemented by international financial institutions, and also transcends to multilateral agencies like the UN and WHO, is further compounded at the national level by national and local politicians who viewed government as a business, where they could amass power and wealth as exemplified by the “P10B Napoles scandal”, at the expense direct services to the people.

Thus, we, the health workers who are witnesses to the daily sufferings of the Filipino people due to social injustice including extreme poverty,  lack of health services, unemployment and lack of basic housing, call on the WHO and the United Nations to stand side by side with the people.  It is not enough to diagnose poverty and prescribe goals and programs for developing countries like the Philippines. The United Nations should truly be an instrument to help end social injustice and uplift the people’s conditions of misery, deprivation and exploitation. Health, being a basic right should never be used for profit and should remain mainly as a state responsibility.

Hospital workers: too much "pork" is unhealthy; abolish pork barrel system, re-channel funds to public health services

Press Release
September 6, 2013

References:

Mr. Eliazar Sobinsky
President, LCPEA-AHW
Contact No: 0932-859-7665
Mr. Bonifacio Carmona
President, PHCEA-AHW
Contact No: 0908-896-0094
Mr. Joey Espanillo
President, NKTIEA-AHW
Contact No: 0917-552-3490

Reminding the public that too much "pork" is unhealthy, hospital workers from Philippine Heart Center (PHC), Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP) and National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) called for the abolition of pork barrel system including the presidential "pork" in favor of people's health.

"Enough of the pork barrel system! We have had enough of the Aquino government's and Department of Health's lies that there is not enough funds for services!" said Eliazar Sobinsky, president of LCP Employees' Association - Alliance of Health Workers (LCPEA-AHW), in a protest action by hospital workers in front of LCP in Quezon City. 

Sobinksy claimed that the P10B-worth pork barrel scam could have covered the operation of 50,000 service or indigent patients with lung problems, at P200,000 cost per operation. Yet the government is only allotting P173.4M as subsidy for LCP 's indigent patients - an amount even less than a senator's pork barrel in a year. Worse, LCP will be given the same measly amount or no increase at all in the proposed health budget for 2014.

"For heart's sake, President Aquino should truly stand against "pork"! He should start abolishing his own pork and rechannel this to public hospitals. President Aquino should see the poor cardiac patients of PHC who are dying because they do not have money for the operation," said Bonifacio Carmona, president of Philippine Heart Center Employees' Association - Alliance of Health Workers (PHCEA-AHW), and member of AHW national council.

Poor patients in PHC are required to raise tens of thousands to about a hundred thousand as "patient's share" for the operation. Each heart operation costs P350,000 - 600,000.

National Kidney and Transplant Institute Employees' Association (NKTIEA-AHW) president Joey Espanillo said, "we call for the immediate abolition of "pork" barrel system, so we can save more patients' lives, especially those of poor patients with end kidney diseases." 

Espanillo said that dialysis for charity kidney patients are charged P5,000-10,000 per week, or P480,000 per year. Directly funding NKTI poor patients from just a portion of the P24B pork barrel allotment in 2014 can already pay for the dialysis of thousands of patients. Sadly, NKTI subsidy for indigent patients will be cut by 6.8% on 2014, from P202.865M this year to P189M.

"The fight against pork barrel system is a fight for our patients' health and lives. As frontliners in health services, we stand with our poor patients and the Filipino people in the fight against pork barrel system and for adequate budget for public health services," concluded Carmona.#

Health Workers to DOH: You will find the poor in public hospitals, not at the ivory tower of profit-driven health care

Statement

We from the Alliance of Health Workers are alarmed at the news article titled "DOH: where are the poor?" (PDI, 8/1/2013).

It is incomprehensible that the DOH "could not locate the addresses of the poor in order to deliver their PhilHealth cards..." while the government is proposing P35B for the premium of PhilHealth sponsored members for 2014, a whooping 180% increase from P12.6B allotted in 2013.

The P35 million subsidy targets only the “selected poorest of the poor” by the government’s standard, or those earning below the P52 daily or Php7,821 monthly poverty threshold for a family of five (NSCB, April 2013). This practically leaves all other poor Filipinos. By IBON Databank estimates, poor Filipinos would number some 38-68 million (IBON, July 2013) or 41-73% of the 92 million estimated population in 2012, way above the 26.8 million poor Filipinos by NSCB standard. 

The proposed P35B for PhilHealth subsidy is more than three times the total budget allotment for the 70 DOH-retained hospitals in 2013. Instead of looking for the “poor” through “mapping” or any other complicated methodologies the government could just put this huge amount to the severely underfunded government hospitals, health units and stations, where poor patients go for treatment.  This could make a big difference in the availability of medicines, supplies and equipment badly needed by the poor patients.

The poor are really not difficult to find, if the government and DOH would only go beyond their showcase of private investors-propelled "improvement" of public hospitals and facilities through privatization. If only Secretary Ona and the Aquino administration would go down to the communities and public hospitals and health facilities, and see and feel for themselves the actual situation, they would not only see the poor, they would also realize how irrelevant and how dangerous their health privatization programs are to the health and lives of the poor Filipinos.

Reference:

Mr..Jossel I. Ebesate, RN

National President

Alliance of Health Workers

09189276381

Health Workers to DOH: Stop deceiving the public, stop privatization of public hospitals

Press Statement

July 27, 2013

Reference:

Mr. Jossel I. Ebesate, RN

Contact No: 09189276381

The Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) told the Department of Health (DOH) to stop deceiving the public in pursuing public-private partnership (PPP) of public hospitals and health services.

“PPP, modernization, or whatever the DOH calls it, the fact is, the government is allowing private investors to profit from health service provision in public hospitals. Public health service provision is the duty of the government,” said Jossel Ebesate, national president of the Alliance of Health Workers.

Ebesate reacted to the statement of DOH Secretary Enrique Ona on Friday, July 26, that the DOH  was “not in favor of privatization”.

 

Ebesate stressed that if indeed the government is indeed not for privatization it should have funded the modernization and improvement of public hospital facilities years ago, instead of passing this role to profiteering private investors. He said that since 1990s, the government through the DOH has been trying to privatize hospitals to cover up for its failure to adequately fund public hospitals and provide for accessible health services to the people.

“The DOH through the years is just changing the terms and packaging, but it is the same privatization policy pushed by the previous administrations.

“Once private investors are allowed into social services like health, whether through PPP, corporatization, or outright sale, the primary purpose is huge profit generation, thus replacing service orientation. This has been proven time and again, most recently with the dramatic increases in water bills as result of privatization of water services,” said Ebesate.

“The DOH is doing a disservice to the Filipino people by consciously making it appear that PPP will benefit the people. The poor people’s experiences in public hospitals up for privatization prove otherwise. Based on our experience in most public hospitals, PPP of selected services only jacked up the price of health services at the expense of our poor patients,” Ebesate, explained.

Ebesate said that Secretary Enrique Ona was further confusing the public by lumping up medical mission initiatives with privatization of health services. #

Closure of Manila’s City Hospitals Will Hurt the Poor

PRESS STATEMENT

July 19, 2013

Reference:

Mr. Jossel I. Ebesate

National President, AHW

Mobile No: 09189276381 

We, health workers in different hospitals under the Alliance of Health Workers, oppose the plan of Mayor Joseph Estrada to close some city hospitals “to lower government expenses and save money.”

The idea to close city hospitals as expressed two Fridays ago (July 5) by the mayor of Manila,  is cruel and heartless. This will negatively affect many poor patients in Manila who rely on these hospitals for services. The six city hospitals, namely Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center, Ospital ng Maynila, Ospital ng Sampaloc, Ospital ng Tondo, Sta. Ana Hospital, and Justice Abad Santos Mother and Child Hospital serve those who cannot afford expensive private health services. Ospital ng Maynila, for instance,  serves more than a thousand out-patients per day and accommodates more than 300 in-patients during peak seasons even if its bed capacity is only 300.

If any of this city hospitals will be closed, residents who usually lacks or even have no means to provide for their basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter  would further delay or worst stop seeking treatment.  This may spell the difference between life and death for most patients.

Closing any of the city hospitals would further add up to the long queue and overcrowding in public hospitals under the national government in the city such as the Philippine General Hospital, Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center, Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital and San Lazaro Hospital.

This dismal situation in terms of funding, staffing and infrastructure of public hospitals is brought about by the continuing neglect and misprioritization by the national government in the national budget.  Instead of addressing the grave lack of funds, the national government devolved and privatized health services to the detriment of the public.

Public hospitals are built primarily to serve the public.  The government, both at the national and local level, is duty-bound to ensure that free, affordable, and accessible public health services are provided to the people. Public hospitals should be improved and developed by the government to better serve the people.

Adequate funding, not closure, will make our public hospitals more relevant and responsive to the needs of the people. Unless the national  or the local government has the political will to really serve the people through adequate, free, affordable and accessible health services, health for all will remain as it is - a dream.#