Herbosa taps Vergeire as 'chief of undersecretaries' of DOH’s operations

Newly appointed Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Ted Herbosa on Thursday said he has appointed former officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire as the chief of undersecretaries of the agency’s operations nationwide. 

Herbosa said Vergeire, who was DOH's officer-in-charge for almost a year, would be tasked with overseeing other undersecretaries in charge of the activities in the National Capital Region (NCR), Southern Luzon, Northern and Central Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

“I gave her a position of like the chief of all the undersecretaries that are in charge of our operations… Those are five Usecs and she would be on top of them,” he said in an interview on ANC.

“She will be helping me deliver the goals with her experience and her previous job [as] caretaker of the Department of Health will continue in that segment of operations. She requested for that and I gladly gave it because I think she deserves that,” he added.

Currently, DOH Undersecretary Enrique Tayag heads the field implementation and coordination team in Northern and Central Luzon; Undersecretary Nestor Santiago Jr., in NCR and Southern Luzon; Undersecretary Camilo Cascolan in Visayas; and Undersecretary Abdullah Dumama Jr. in Mindanao.

Malacañang announced Vergeire’s appointment as DOH officer-in-charge in July 2022. Herbosa, meanwhile, was appointed Secretary by President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. on Monday, June 5.

Digitizing DOH

Further, Herbosa said he plans on digitizing the DOH to make the agency “very efficient” and deliver healthcare services to the people, particularly those in the rural areas.

He said he also appointed Tayag as the agency’s chief information officer to “make sure that we digitize healthcare so it becomes accessible in the most remote areas of the public.”

He also stressed that digitizing the agency would also help address the alleged issues of corruption linked to it, considering that the Commission on Audit (COA) earlier flagged the DOH over unobligated and undisbursed COVID-19 funds amounting to around P30 billion.

“I want to also digitize the financing, the disbursement, the spending and procurement of these billions of pesos of people’s tax money. I want them all to go healthcare,” Herbosa said. 

The new Health chief believes once the issues on DOH's finances and healthcare workers exodus are addressed, the President may give the agency a bigger budget for next year. —Giselle Ombay/ VAL, GMA Integrated News