Secretary Herbosa and the challenges at DoH

EXACTLY a week ago, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced the appointment of Dr. Teodoro Herbosa as the new head of the Department of Health (DoH), a position that had been left vacant for a year. Dr. Herbosa was the pandemic national task force adviser of former president Rodrigo Duterte.

Presidential Communications Office chief Cheloy Velicaria-Garafil said Herbosa “brings with him a wealth of experience and expertise in health care systems, public health, hospital administration, emergency and disaster medicine.”

Dr. Teodoro ‘Ted’ Herbosa. File Photo

The Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines (Phapi) and former presidential adviser for entrepreneurship, Jose Maria “Joey” Concepcion 3rd, had endorsed Herbosa's appointment. Concepcion said the epidemiologist and public-health expert would help the government keep a tight lid on Covid-19 amid rising infections. Keeping the pandemic under control is imperative for the national economy to run at full capacity.

Duterte was criticized for appointing military men to the top positions of the country's pandemic inter-agency task force. Health experts were sidelined. Instead, Duterte's generals implemented a strategy patterned after decades-long military border controls used in its anti-insurgency campaign and the brutalities of Duterte's drug war. Herbosa's appointment was widely seen as the rudder that stabilized the somewhat spotty response to the grave ills posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

He comes to the job fully prepared. He has wide experience in trauma surgery, and disaster and emergency medicine. At the University of the Philippines (UP), he began the fellowship program for trauma surgery and the residency program in emergency medicine.

Moreover, unlike many academics who still need to be trained in management, Herbosa has already done some stint in administration work. He was the Health undersecretary from 2010 to 2015. He also served as executive vice president of UP during the term of Danilo Concepcion in 2017.

Herbosa was the co-lead of the UP pandemic response team, which guided the government's decision-making on Covid-19.

The president of the Philippine College of Physicians, Dr. Rontgene Solante, also lauded Herbosa's experience in public health emergencies. However, he noted that there are some issues that Herbosa needs to address.

“He needs to lay down important directions on how we approach Covid-19, now that the World Health Organization has lifted the public health emergency, particularly on vaccination. We also have low vaccination rates for measles, tetanus and diphtheria.”

Dr. Jose de Grano of the Phapi, meanwhile, hopes that Herbosa would be open to his group's concerns regarding regulation, licensing procedures and staffing problems.

The Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) said that when Herbosa was Health undersecretary, he tried to privatize the Philippine Orthopedic Center and to abolish the Fabella Hospital, a hospital for the poor. The AHW said privatizing public hospitals would only reap profits for hospital owners, while health workers continue to languish.

In April 2021, Herbosa made headlines with his “death by community pantry” tweet. He tweeted this in reaction to reports of an old man who died while waiting in line at a community pantry organized by actress Angel Locsin in Quezon City.

His controversial tweet angered many netizens, prompting him to issue a public apology on Facebook on April 23, saying that he should have been more careful with his words. He filed a leave of absence to reflect on the “misstep.”

In March 2021, he said the Philippine government had done a “fairly good job” in managing the public health crisis, in support of Malacañang's self-assessment that its response to the pandemic was “excellent.” He also defended Duterte and then-Health secretary Francisco Duque 3rd from criticisms of poor management of the pandemic. This came in the wake of controversial vaccine procurements from China and the government's failure to process the Covid-19 vaccines donated by Pfizer.

In October 2020, Herbosa also angered Filipinos online for sharing a rape joke on Facebook. He swiftly issued a public apology and added that he would undergo a gender sensitivity seminar to “make amends” for his mistake.

Herbosa comes fully prepared for the job. But he has to outline his vision and temper the acid in his words. The massive challenges at the DoH demand no less.