Members of the Healthcare Professionals Alliance against COVID-19 (HPAAC) and the COVID19 Action Network (CAN) have called on the Senate leadership and President Duterte to immediately call for the conduct special sessions to extend the deadline of the Bayanihan 2 Law.
Action for Economic Reforms (AER) Coordinator Filomeno Sta. Ana III expressed serious concern over the fact that Bayanihan 2 will be expiring this June 30, leaving a lot of pandemic-related programs without appropriate funding for the rest of the year.
“This time, it is an imperative and an absolute necessity to spend big and ensure that the spending is responsive to flattening the pandemic," Sta. Ana said in a press briefing Friday, June 25.
"If there is enough money to be spent in addressing COVID, especially in the communities, why will we stop its continued use to support pandemic response? It breaks my heart to see a COVID- positive health worker taking care of COVID positive patients. Is this what our government wants?” Katerina Abiertas, a municipal health worker from Samar and a member of HPAAC said.
Eddie Dorotan, coordinator of the COVID19 Action Network, said it is wrong not to extend Bayanihan 2 especially since COVID cases outside Metro Manila are rising and many are still dying.
"It is wrong not to extend Bayanihan 2 because it has P6 billion for health. Why will we return that to the Treasury when we need to spend that right now to address COVID?” he said.
The group said a total of P6.6 billion from the Bayanihan 2 Law appropriated for health human resource and lab tests will expire on June 30 if Congress does not pass a law extending its deadline.
They added that other budget items set to expire on June 30 are funds for contact tracing, digital education materials, programs for affected farmers and workers, and response and recovery interventions.
Meanwhile, medical and IT experts called for hospital digitization to sustain quality healthcare amid the pandemic.
Dr. Bu Castro, former president of the Philippine Medical Association (PMA), urged hospitals to adopt digital innovations to improve the delivery of healthcare services, as medical professionals on the frontlines, and hospital capacities continue to be pushed to the limit due to rising cases of COVID-19.
“The healthcare industry can devise a way to enable doctors to attend to their patients, without the risks of exposure (to COVID-19), while patients are provided quality treatment,” said Castro, who is also a pathologist and medico-legal expert, at the Globe Business Webinar titled-Own Progress through Collaboration: “ Innovating Healthcare with Digital Technologies,” held Saturday.
He said Telemedicine, a form of diagnosis and treatment of patients through telecommunications “may not be perfect, but best in the time of pandemic.”
John Duenas, CEO of HyBrain, the digital provider of Hospital Information System (HIS) said digital innovations in the healthcare industry can provide solutions to the critical problems particularly on the doctor: patient ratio.
He said as of April 2020, there were ten doctors to 10,000 population in the National Capital Region, while there were 0.8 doctors to 10,000 population in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao.
“Digitizing the health information lays the foundation of the digital health model in the emerging markets,” said Duenas. “For best outcomes, other healthcare innovations such as telemedicine, mHealth applications, and e-prescriptions will be built around the digitized health information.”
According to Castro, global studies, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show decline by more than 40 percent in the number of patients who visit hospitals, including visits to emergency departments due to fear of COVID-19 infection.
He added that the Philippines has already lost more than 40 doctors, who died from COVID-19 infection, due to exposure to patients who are COVID-19 positive.