By: Jocelyn Pineda-Alvarez
IPIL, Zamboanga Sibugay, Mar. 23 (PIA) - Imelda town’s health efforts did not go unnoticed as the town received the Healthy Pilipinas Awards for Healthy Communities 2022 from by the Department of Health (DOH).
Earlier, DOH and partners gave recognition to local government units around the country for their work in promoting the seven (7) priority areas defined in the DOH health promotion framework strategy. The award also recognized COVID19 response of the LGUs. The 7 priority areas include: Diet and Exercise; Environmental Health; Vaccines and immunization; Substance Use; Mental Health; Sexual and Reproductive Health; Violence and Injury Prevention.
In the Health Connect media forum held Mar. 23, Heathy Pilipinas awardees share their best health practices and discussed their health promotion strategies. Dr. Myrna Cabral-Salomes, Municipal Health Officer, Imelda, Zamboanga Sibugay Province shared how the province struggled to implement the vaccines and immunization priority area program but came out victorious in the end.
Dr. Salomes said, for the Age-appropriate Immunization (from birth to senior immunizations) - there was a massive decreased in coverage due to the COVID19 pandemic.
“We started with 106% coverage in 2019, eventually decreased to 73% in 2020 and 67.78% in 2021,” she reported.
In response to the threat on low coverage of age -appropriate immunization, the LGU effortlessly reached-out to parents, guardians, families of the under five-year-old children and the school-aged children including the senior citizens.
The LGU conducted massive education campaign, barangay to barangay visits or barangay hopping so the community will feel the presence of the program and ease their mistrusts.
“Because of pandemic, we experienced gap in the supply of vaccines and we also found it hard to penetrate to communities due to strict quarantine/ health protocol,” Dr Salomes narrated.
She said all these challenges did not stop them from doing their job and delivering health services to the people, she is thankful to the municipal local government for providing the needed transportation support and the barangay local government for also helping by providing food to constituents and health workers during vaccination and immunization activities.
“Our Innovation is that we have annual awarding to barangays and health workers, this is to boost their efforts to do better in implementing the program, and for the barangay to have ownership of the program,” she said.
Salomes also shared that they give freebies to children during immunization activity.
Healthy communities award is one platform which encourages good practice sharing so that others can elevate and scale up where possible.
Meanwhile, with the upcoming national and local elections, Dr. Salomes called on public to choose next leader that puts public health on the top of agenda, “health is wealth, health is people, health is investment.” (EDT/JPA/Zamboanga Sibugay)
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