Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — The Department of Health will get a record-breaking 41% boost in its 2016 budget, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said in a statement issued on Sunday (August 2).
From P87.7 billion this year the DOH budget will shoot up to P124.2 billion next year.
“Call it a booster shot or a massive fund transfusion, but percentage-wise, this one breaks the record,” Recto said.
The boost, he said, would allow the DOH to spend P100 million more per day in 2016. So it could “field more doctors to the barrios, improve health facilities, buy more medicine, provide health insurance to all senior citizens, among others.
Going into more details, Recto said the DOH would hire 21,118 health professionals, which would cost P7.1 billion in first-year salaries alone. The amount is P2.8 billion higher than this year’s figure.
Citing a DOH document, Recto said the DOH would hire hire and deploy 1,192 rural doctors (up from 398 this year), 15,000 nurses, and 3,000 midwives in 2016.
The ambitious budget includes P27 billion for the Health Facilities Enhancement Program (HFEP), which aims to improve barangay health stations, town and city health centers, and hospitals
That figure is more than double the current P13.1 billion.
As Recto pointed out, just a partial listing of projects under this program contains 11,240 items, which takes up it seeks to fund 104 pages of small print in the national budget bill.
Of the P27 billion, P7.7 billion is earmarked for the acquisition of new hospital equipment.
“But the bulk of the HFEP budget will trickle down to barangays,” Recto said.
Specifically, that’s P15.6 billion set aside for upgrading barangay health stations.
Under its proposed P124.2 billion budget, the DOH will increase its allocation for drugs and vaccines from P7.8 billion to P10 billion — part of which would allow the immunization of 2.63 million children.
A special provision in the proposed 2016 national budget, Recto explained, would require the DOH to send 80% of drugs and pharmaceutical preparations to provinces with a high poverty incidence.
But the biggest chunk of the proposed DOH budget would pay for the PhilHealth insurance of 15.4 million indigent families and 2.8 million senior citizens, Recto said.
This would cost P43.9 billion, of which P37 billion would be used to settle premium payments of poor enrollees, while P6.would will cover the membership of senior citizens — that is, those 60 years old and above.
Republic Act 10645, which Recto authored, puts all senior citizens under mandatory PhilHealth coverage.
