📷: Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa
Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) opposes the appointment of Philippines Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Teodoro Herbosa as the president of the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA).
The WHA is the main decision-making body of World Health Organization (WHO) and is comprised of 194 Member States. This is the first time that the Philippines will take the role as president of WHA.
The WHA and the peoples of the world need a health leader who is imbued with service orientation, will not be a pawn of big business’ interests, and has proven track record of upholding the people’s right to health.
The WHA reputation and its mission may be put at risk by electing a health secretary who has been widely criticized in his own country for implementing anti-people, anti-health workers programs and policies, and for unethical remarks and actions.
Dr. Herbosa’s appointment as the president of the WHA may further steer global health policies towards further privatization of health care at the expense of the poor peoples of the world.
In the Philippines, Dr Herbosa spearheads the implementation of Marcos Jr’s pro-imperialist, pro-big business policies of commercialization and privatization of health care and health budget cuts.
Years of implementation of these neoliberal policies in the Philippines result to very expensive and inaccessible health services for the poor majority. Filipinos shoulder the biggest chunk of current health expenditures, with out-of-pocket expenses remaining high at 44.4% in 2023. The Marcos government’s PhilHealth, the main financer of individual based health services, is hounded by anomalies and irregularities, and only covers 40% or less of hospital costs.
Dr. Herbosa’s track record showed his anti-people and anti-health workers stance. He pushed for privatization of health care, was involved in questionable transactions in health and repeatedly breached ethical protocols in dealing with the tobacco industry.
He approved and recommended to the DOH the privatization of Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC), Dr Jose Fabella Medical Center and other public hospitals in 2013 and 2014, which were widely opposed and stopped by people’s protests.
He was indicted by the Ombudsman in 2016 for graft along with other health officials over the allegedly anomalous procurement of the P392.2-million modernization program of the Region 1 Medical Center.
Dr Herbosa was an adviser to the Duterte administration’s Inter Agency Task Force during the COVID-19 pandemic which implemented the inefficient and militarized pandemic response.
He belittled health workers’ concerns and sacrifices by posting on social media that health workers protesting over their unpaid benefits are not heroes. He was criticized for irresponsible statements including blaming the people and patients who trooped a community pantry . Worse, he red-tagged the University of the Philippines Student Regent and health workers, putting people’s and health workers’ lives in danger.
He was criticized by health advocates for allegedly violating the Philippine government’s commitment to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the Philippine’s Civil Service’s memorandum circular that explicitly prohibits government officials from engaging in unnecessary interactions with, or receiving donations from, the tobacco industry.
HEAD calls on all health workers, health advocates and peoples of the world to stand up for people’s right to health. Let us not allow the further privatization and domination of big business interests’ in health being promoted by the likes of Dr Herbosa.
Let us continue to work for a State-funded, free, comprehensive, national public health care system. #
