News about the Department of Health in recent months, to put it mildly, have been quite disturbing.
Principally triggered by the Dengvaxia scandal, focus of late has been on the policies and programs of the DoH under the last Aquino-appointed secretary, former Congresswoman Janette Garin, with fall-out covering the un-confirmed first secretary of the Duterte administration, Paulyn Ubial, a career DoH officer.
The French pharmaceutical firm, Sanofi-Pasteur, announced toward the end of last year that a vaccine they had developed against dengue called Dengvaxia may not be effective for those who have not yet been previously infected by dengue, and may in fact trigger more cases of severe disease.
That admission of their own analysis of Dengvaxia created panic in the Philippines where apparently the Department of Health hastily authorized not just the purchase of P3.5 billion worth of the vaccine from Sanofi, but inoculated hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in the waning days of the Aquino administration.
Now there are allegations that some children who died from dengue fever have actually been inoculated with Dengvaxia, and the same may have been the cause of death. It is such a mess, and criminal if true.
Even the World Health Organization denied having certified the validity of Sanofi-Pasteur’s and DoH’s claims about the vaccine, which under normal circumstances should have been sought prior to such a huge purchase. That our children may have become unwitting guinea pigs for the DoH-Sanofi vaccine deal and now potential fatal victims due to a rushed vaccination project is something that strikes terror on every parent’s heart. No refund, partial or full, can do justice if deaths can really be traced to the vaccination project.
The DoH is the public institution responsible for the health of 107 million Filipinos, even if many of us rely on the private hospitals and private medical practitioners for our health needs.
Lately however, scandal after scandal has been hounding the DoH, which in the past was spared from allegations of corruption, as much as the Bureau of Customs, or the Philippine National Police among others, have become rather poster boys of. Sad.
The latest development comes from a whistle-blower, a former consultant of then SoH Ubial, who alleges that there is a deeply-entrenched “mafia” in the department which not only overprices purchase of medicines and equipment, but worse, like Janet Lim Napoles, went into the “conversion” of budgetary outlays into ghost purchases, with 90 percent of the “purchase” amounts going into shared pockets. Wow!
During the late sixties, we had an apartment tenant whose business was supposedly supplying medicines and medical formulations to the DoH, then a highly centralized agency before its functions were partially devolved to LGUs by the Local Government Code in the 90s.
After the tenant moved to their own residence in a tony subdivision south of Metro Manila, one of the other tenants informed me when I came to collect rent that the former tenant had flourished from his “racket.” And what was that?
Allegedly, his company would buy cheap medicines from Italy or India and supply the same to the health department, in “connivance” with DoH regional officials. What was wrong about the deals was that supposedly, the medicines were of dubious efficacy because 20 milligram tablets were re-packed as 40 mg. That was the racket, or so the neighbor told me then.
Then a college student, I could not fathom how some people could be so unconscionable as to trifle with people’s health.
Now I got an e-mail from a dear friend from the medical profession who reported irregularities in the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., the chairperson of which is the Secretary of Health. This was also a scandal that reached the news a few years back. Whatever happened beyond the reportage I do not know.
It is bad enough that PhilHealth’s actuarial and therefore future financial capability is already “mortgaged.” It would seem that salvation can come only from massive infusions of public monies to save the insurance system that is supposed to provide universal health care from bankruptcy.
Which means taxpayers will be royally screwed all over again, first for meager returns on their invested contributions because PhilHealth answers only a percentage of their medical bills, and secondly, what if the institution goes belly up, and salvation can come only from taxpayer money?
Opthalmological “crooks” apparently have been charging PhilHealth for procedures on “ghost” patients at worst case, or from unnecessary procedures, which borders on the criminal.
The “modus” or “business model” relied on recruiters who were paid commissions per eye procedure. These recruiters many of whom had not spent a single day in medical school, would dictate to opthalmologists the kind of intra-ocular lenses they should use for their cataract patients. And the sad thing is that many eye doctors particularly young start-up professionals agreed to such dangerous practices lest they lose the “business.”
Despite these shenanigans, PhilHealth kept paying. Obviously, the racketeers had people inside the system in connivance. There is also the racket of paying hospitals and physicians “quickly” in exchange for “rebates” or commissions.
How could people in government and the private racketeers they connive with be so callous as to trifle with the health and well-being of human beings?
Newly-appointed Secretary Pinggoy Duque, already re-cycled from the semi-retired and infinitely less stressful job as GSIS Chair, will have his hands full dealing with the royal mess that he inherited at DoH. I can only commiserate with him, and wish a friend more power in his new job.