Catanduanes Forum

copied from catanduanestribune.com

Letters to the Editor

Stop the privatization of the PHO!
February 18,2009

I was horrified after reading this paper’s banner story last week titled:" Operation of EBMC as for-profit hospital seen". It seems that some "business-minded" individuals are out to put another heavy burden on our kababayans.
Privatization: killing us softly.

In an "at a glance" take, privatization is a dictate of foreign lending and financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to creditors like our past and the present governments. Our bureaucrats, ever dependent on foreign debts to sustain their cling to power and their thirst for money, can do nothing but to follow the condition of these financial institutions in order to get more debts. These conditions are under the principle of globalization and free trade that seeks the removal of all national restrictions against foreign investments and the creditor-state’s abandonment of its social services program, deemed as a rival to loan payment, thus privatization is important to these crooks.

What is more alarming is the government’s aggressiveness to re model our health care delivery system into a corporate set-up setting.

Under the current government, the Health Sector Reform Agenda and Executive Order 102 diminished the role of the Philippine government in the provision of health care services. Consequently more than 38 public hospitals intend to privatize by 2010.Specialty hospitals like the Lung Center of the Philippines, the National Kidney and Transplant Institute and the Philippine Heart Center among others have in one way or another have been paved for "corporatization"The privatization of health care will deny affordable and accessible basic health services to the poor which currently comprise the majority of the Philippine population. Increasingly the government has decreased its budget allocation for government hospitals where the poor go. Terms like "financial autonomy" "fiscal discipline" and financial autonomy is nothing but euphemisms for commercialization of healthcare and subtle state abandonment on health and basic services!

But it doesn’t end there, under THE GOVERNMENT RATIONALIZATIONALIZATION PROGRAM or EO 366; there will also be imminent threat to the security of tenure of non-medical employees in the guise of "fiscal savings".

ABA-KA-TANDUANES

Catanduanes is a poor province, perhaps the poorest among all 6 provinces in the region. The state of people’s health is bad because of socio-political factors and frequent nature tantrums. Majority of our citizens rely mainly on agriculture as a source of living and in a latest study by the Asosasyon nin mga Parabandala sa Catanduanes, the poverty level has gone up, production ais low and the peso’s purchasing power decreased. In this situation, any increase in the price of health services is a huge stumbling block in the Catandunganons’ accessibility to health services. The provincial hospital formerly known as the EBMC is the only government-run tertiary hospital in the island, thus all the medical referrals are concentrated here. Thus, it is imperative that pur kababayans’ access would not be hampered by high costs, or else they would go nowhere.

Yes, we are ABA (poor), but we are not helpless or lethargic. I am appealing to everyone concerned to oppose this new plan that will allow government abandonment of its primordial role of delivering quality and affordable health services to its people. We must act swiftly before malnutrition, morbidity and high death rate plague our province tomorrow.

Lastly, let this be a warning to Joseph Cua and all the politicians out there. I generally don’t believe in the electoral process as a force for societal change as it was and still is a play ground of the elite, but just for once in the coming election, if this ill-conceived plan becomes real, the people must waste no time in snowballing a movement that will make sure that these politicians be thrown into the "kangkungan" of history.

Concerned Citizen