AN INFRASTRUCTURE-oriented think-tank called for the reactivation of shelved Department of Health (DOH) barangay health stations (BHS) as additional quarantine centers for coronavirus response.
This suggestion should be given serious thought. As the government scrambles to augment its meager hospital facilities to address the growing number of COVID-19 patients, activating shelved DOH BHSs as additional facilities for the quarantine of COVID-19 positive persons, and even persons under investigation (PUI) or persons under monitoring (PUM), makes sense. These centers are most critical in locations where there is greatest density of poor communities, especially if there are no available quarantine facilities within these areas.
According to Terry Ridon, Infrawatch PH convenor and former urban poor chief of the Duterte administration, there are 570 BHSs units available. He revealed that the project contractor of the DOH BHSs recently sent a letter to President Duterte stating that these fully completed and substantially completed BHS units are all available and ready to be used by the DOH or local government units.
As these BHSs are easily accessible to barangays, the risk of exposure arising from the transit of COVID-19 patients, PUMs and PUIs will be minimized to the barangay level. But most important, those within urban poor communities will be able to quarantine their affected community members according to strict protocol.
The primary concern for urban poor communities cannot be overstated. No less than United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee protocol for COVID-19 has identified communities camps, informal settlements and urban slums as requiring special consideration in COVID-19 readiness and response operations.
Alternatively, the BHSs can be used as community COVID-19 testing centers to declog the already burdensome logistical and personnel load in the country’s main public and private hospitals.
The importance of limiting the risks of transmission arising from movement, overcrowding, climatic exposure due to substandard shelter and poor nutrition and health within poor communities cannot be overemphasized. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that COVID-19 transmission in these areas is a certainty. This is worrisome.
