DOH: Scholarships to upskill health workers being developed

Postgraduate scholarship programs aimed at upskilling healthcare workers in the country is in the pipeline, the Department of Health (DOH) said Thursday.

The DOH, through officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire, has partnered with the Philippine-American Educational Foundation (PAEF) to provide additional postgraduate scholarship programs for Filipino health workers. 

Vergeire and PAEF signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Thursday to develop joint programs to support the development of health professionals and public health practitioners and ensure access to good healthcare for Filipinos.

Learning opportunities in the fields of Health Systems Management, Environmental and Community Health, Health Policy and Administration, Epidemiology and Disease surveillance, and Infectious Disease Control, among others will be opened.

Moreover, the DOH said the partnership aims to establish a general framework for facilitating the grant of scholarships and research programs, and enable exchanges under the DOH’s capacity-building and research initiatives under the Universal Health Care Law.

Vergeire said they will also open similar opportunities for job order personnel comprising around 63% of the agency’s entire human resource base.

“Universal Health Care is centered [on] supporting and uplifting people -- not just the people who require healthcare services, but also the people who provide those services or those who toil to make those services effective, responsive, and accessible,” she said.

“As such, it is therefore necessary to pour equal attention to ensuring the growth, development, and wellness of the very people on whom we rely to realize UHC—and, with this MOU, we aim to do exactly that,” she added.  —LBG, GMA Integrated News