Friday, October 03, 2008 Sumog-oy: GenSan crafts own health code By Ben o. Sumog-oy Issues and Views
First Part)
AS THIS paper hits the ground, the members of the Technical Working Group (TWG), created by virtue of Executive Order 35, Series of 2008 issued by City Mayor Pedro B. Acharon Jr., are already holding their maiden meeting at the city's training center to map out strategies on how to discharge their mandated task, that is, to write/draft the General Santos City Health Code or the GSCHC.
By operation of law, Mayor Acharon acts as the chair of the Local Health Board (LHB). With the support of the LHB, he continues to institute meaningful reforms in the General Santos City Hospital (GSCH), under the leadership of City Administrator Marcelino E. Dospueblos, concurrent hospital administrator, Zenaida G. Eturma, assistant hospital administrator, and Dr. Arvin C. Alejandro, chief of hospital; and in the City Field Health Services Department, under the supervision of Dr. Jacinto T. Makilang, acting department head.
The significant reforms instituted in the GSC hospital and the city's field health services will be the center of our future discussion. This means that we will soon explore this scarcely explored terrain in our future columns; in fact it is next in line. This is the story that we will comprehensively tackle soon.
This we will do because we feel that there is a need for us to prominently situate the city's welfare and health programs on the whole local development vista so that we may be able to contribute in the shifting of a traditional mental paradigm involving the delivery of the local government's health and welfare programs. The social force necessary to propel this paradigm shift should be given necessary nurturance.
We will attempt to do this as we undergo the process of writing the city's health code. It is now time to be for the people to be emancipated from this enslaving consciousness. The people's dignity cannot be fully celebrated if society continues to look at the implementation of welfare and health programs as glorified alms for the poor and not as a part of the whole package of an economic development strategy.
Yes, the social paradigm that we need to develop should be that helping the poor is infusing a life-giving blood into the economy; ensuring the vitality and dynamism of economic forces; and contributing the empowerment of basic communities. They are economic development indicators, which must go hand-in-hand with increases in production, if genuine development is to be attained.
So, while the concrete output expected of the TWG (composed of "the cream of the crop" among government functionaries and civil society forces), is to come up with the final draft of the GSCHC, crafted in an ordinance form, which shall serve as an executive proposal, ready for adoption into law by the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP), and, upon completion, the same shall serve as a guidepost for the formulation and implementation of health policies, programs and projects, TWG's functionality does not merely gravitate within the limited confines of such sphere. It goes outside the box, so to speak.
Thus, while the writing of the code is perceived merely to ensure effective and efficient delivery of health services to the city's growing population, it is also expected to play certain roles in the shaping of the city's political and economic contours. The enforcement of comprehensive health and welfare programs in many modern welfare states is not categorized as an expense account by the government.
It is considered as an effective economic development strategy for two reasons: One, it ensures the vitality and dynamism of the productive social section, thus, in affect, ensuring rapid increases in production and Two, it reduces household expenses, thus, as an offshoot, increases the people's per capita income.
(For comments: Email Address: bsumogoy@yahoo.com; Blog site: bensumogoy@wordpress.com.ph).
