LAOAG CITY — More than a hundred health personnel, mostly registered nurses, will be deployed to the rural areas of Ilocos Norte province.
Dr. Sherwin Albino of the provincial health office said Friday the deployment of nurses, midwives and doctors to the barrios aims to ensure that no one would be left behind in terms of availing medical and dental services.
To augment the number of health professionals in impoverished towns, the provincial health office is hiring 101 nurses this year to campaign for wellness and help prevent the spread of diseases, Albino said. Last year, the office hired 175 nurses.
As a priority program of the Duterte administration, the Department of Health has a no balance billing policy if an indigent patient’s name is included in the database of the National Household Targeting System (NHTS) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
The NHTS database lists poor households in the country that went through a rigorous identification and field validation.
As of the latest survey, the Ilocos region has 74,000 identified indigents. (/PNA)
