“Keep Us Alive.”
We echo this cry coming from the heart of the Head of the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) in an interview by the CNN Philippines responding to President Duterte’s reaction to the call of the medical and health community for timeout. We express sympathy in their dire situation and we call on this government to put their acts together to arrest the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the National Capital Region (NCR) now at 103,000, surpassing even the source of the virus, the President’s closest ally, China.
We support the call of our medical workers for a break to reflect and re-chart a full plan and strategy to fight COVID-19. Calling for a more efficient response to manage the pandemic is not an attempt to demean the government, not even close to calling a revolution. It is giving this government another chance to recalibrate their efforts and strategies against the pandemic to be able to contain and manage the increasing number of cases.
For the President to say that he detests to be the last to know of the situation of the health sector is a big lie. To castigate them for airing their sentiment in public is absurd. The medical and health sectors have been writing letters to Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III and the COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) since February 2020 regarding various issues they are confronted with, but the response is none to minimal or slow. It is as if all their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
We cannot help but to sympathize with our frontliners and be furious at the situation they are forced to confront every day, when all our government leaders do is spew insensitive comments even pointing out how they should perform their work better.
“Our medical system is clearly overwhelmed. Even ordinary citizens can accept this truth, yet the President and his alter-egos are blind and deaf. It is even adding insult to injury when he asked the health sector workers to apply as police and military who receive higher salaries, implying that the health sector’s plea is only about money. We decry this insult to our medical frontliners who risk and offer their lives daily just to save other people’s lives”, Yoly Esguerra, National Coordinator of PMPI said.
“All these are defensive reactions from the government’s failures to effectively respond to the pandemic. As it is, this government does not know how to listen. This government is onion-skinned at criticisms. This government is insensitive to the woes and struggles of its people. It only listens to itself, to the war-mongers in his circle.” Ms. Esguerra added.
“Our President reveals how selfish and short-sighted he is. The way he analyzes things and interprets things are different from those who have expressed tiredness, and burnout due to this pandemic. But more importantly, the President is so sensitive to criticisms, especially to the statement of the health professionals,” Ms. Edel Hernandez, Executive Director of Medical Action Group and member of PMPI NCR-National Cluster.
“The health professionals have in no way tried to demean the government,” Ms. Hernandez added.
We, from the Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc. (PMPI), a social development and national network of civil society organizations, rights groups, peace and faith-based institutions are in solidarity with our medical frontliners, whose everyday life are at risk by performing their sworn duty. They have never abandoned their posts and have no plans in doing so. They are asking for help so they can perform better. They need support and listening ear, not insults and rebuke.
Instead, we call on the government and President Duterte to open channels for genuine dialogue. To accept its limitations and find a new set of leadership with a great medical mind to steer the path to management and recovery from this pandemic. They need government support, clear and coordinated guidelines, better benefits and compensation, and importantly better protection from the disease.
Most of our healthcare workers are already tired and burned out as they feel they are nearing the end of the line. If the government fails to hear and acknowledge these and fails to provide real and effective concrete actions, comprehensive and recalibrates plans, we might be the first country to be raising the white flag.
We hope not.
