Concepcion, Tarlac—Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito is pressing for the restoration of the Department of Health’s P30-billion budget for its Health Facilities Enhancement Program as he visited two hospitals which he warned would turn into “white elephant projects” without the said funding.
“I’m really fighting for the restoration of the budget. Last year, the HFEP budget was P30 billion,” said Ejericto, chair of the Senate committee on health and demography.
Ejercito said he saw how HFEP can help provinces, especially in the expansion and upgrade of health facilities.
Although provincial and local government units can provide funding for these health facilities, Ejercito said these would not be enough.
“They are largely dependent on HFEP funds from the DOH to improve their health facilites,” he said.
HFEP funds, the senator said, becomes more necessary as President Rodrigo Duterte is about to sign into the Universal Health Care measure which seels to enroll all Filipinos under a state-backed health insurance program both as paying and non-paying members.
“We have to prepare for that. I’m very concerned about the first year of UHC implementation because there’s no budget HFEP for 2019,” he said.
Ejercito said he is open to significantly reducing the funding, noting that the government can settle for half of the budget or at least P16 billion to finish the construction of pending health facilites.
“We have to focus first on these structures so they can already be used th personnel and patients,” he said.
“If there were people who were remiss in the implementation of HFEP, if the absorptive capacity was slow, our people should not be allowed to suffer. If there’s no HFEP budget for 2019, this would still be the situation— you will still have people in hospital corridors across the country. But if these facilities would be finished, all patients will be inside hospital rooms,” Ejercito added.