ONE lesson we must learn from the COVID-19 pandemic is how health truly is wealth and why we must deploy more health professionals not just in hospitals but in schools as well.
There are calls to establish more school clinics. We caution against the possible “edifice complex” mind-set in the Department of Education’s push for building or reconfiguring some classrooms into school clinics. Our students, teachers, non-teaching staff, and parents would give greater value to having more nurses, doctors, counselors, dentists, psychometricians, physical therapists, nutritionists, and other health care professionals assigned to campuses and school districts.
If DepEd and the Department of Budget and Management are worried about the personnel cost of hiring more health professionals, they can apply a mix of solutions to lessen the cost burden. For example, instead of building new classrooms, corporate foundations and civic groups should sponsor the cost of having a team of health professionals on long term duty in campuses.
The teams of health professionals could be rotated through clusters of schools on different weekdays, thereby maximizing their availability. Some could be hired through contracts of service and job orders, while more could be deployed with increased funding for the Doctors to the Barrios Program.
In the school health perspective, medical and dental outreach missions are inadequate to have lasting impact on the health of students, teachers, non-teaching staff, and parents. School health means monitoring and application of interventions over a significant period of time. This role includes nutrition, personal hygiene, mental health, oral health, vaccinations, and health education.
Yes, the school clinics plan is nice, but it is much better to have more doctors, nurses and counselors in schools. Because the truth is: a healthcare professional has more value than a physical clinic that has no doctor or nurse.
