GENERAL SANTOS CITY – The provincial government of South Cotabato is hiring additional nurses to address the dwindling health care workers assigned in its hospitals handling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases.
Dr. Conrado Braña, chief of the South Cotabato Provincial Hospital (SCPH), said they have at least 30 vacant positions for registered nurses as of Friday and working to fill them up to cope with the situation.
The local government has treatment and isolation facilities for COVID-19 at the SCPH in Koronadal City and the Soccsksargen General Hospital (SGH) in Surallah town.
“A number of our nurses actually resigned to work abroad instead. I recently endorsed the resignation of our nurse who was already called up by their agency,” he told reporters.
The official said the SCPH needs more health care workers in line with the continuing expansion of its COVID-19 ward.
It opened the facility last week in response to the increasing cases in the province and decongest patients at the SGH, the local government’s dedicated treatment center for the disease.
Braña said the establishment of the additional ward complies with a directive from the Department of Health that required Level 2 hospitals to allocate 30 percent of their bed capacity for COVID-19 patients.
“We need to expand our facilities since the allotted beds in our private hospitals are almost filled up and that will be a big problem if our cases will continue to increase,” Braña.