Supporting Filipino First Responders and Maternal Health Services amid COVID-19
By Indrani Kashyap and Jeremiah E. Sotto
When young Jed Lucero was studying to be a doctor, little did he know that within a few years of graduating, he would become a prominent health warrior, protecting the remote and vulnerable people of Sumilao during the largest global public health crisis of the century — the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sumilao’s rural health unit (RHU) in Bukidnon Province, where Lucero now serves as the municipal health officer, is the main birthing and health center for its chiefly agrarian community of banana and pineapple plantations.
In February 2020, as the pandemic started spreading to the interior of the country, it became critical to institute safety measures in health care facilities. By early March, with the disaster risk reduction and management officer and the mayor’s office, Lucero established strict triage areas, set up hand washing stations and foot baths, and put up physical barriers to minimize direct physical contact between clients and providers.
The countrywide lockdown and lack of public transport led to an increased inflow of clients seeking care at the RHU, as other private health care facilities were either closed or too far.
“For the past month, we averaged two deliveries a day,” says the young doctor. By comparison, the RHU in 2019 averaged five to seven deliveries per week. This was in addition to the antenatal, postnatal and immunization services the facility provides. Lucero temporarily shifted his base to the RHU so he could offer round-the-clock service, as he felt, “We cannot deny [any] patient for care.”
One shortfall that could have derailed services and forced the facility to close was the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). “In March, we just [had] about 10 sets of PPE,” recalls Lucero. To fill this glaring gap and allow services to continue safely, Jhpiego, through the Sexual Health and Empowerment (SHE) project, provided RHU staff in Sumilao with appropriate PPE for their work at the health center and for their visits to households and areas in quarantine.
Currently in its third year, the SHE project, led by Oxfam and funded by Global Affairs Canada, with Jhpiego as a technical partner, has been working to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights and prevent gender-based violence (GBV) among women and girls in six underserved, conflict-affected and disadvantaged regions of the Philippines. With COVID-19 threatening to stall many essential services in these regions, Jhpiego supported RHUs to continue sexual and reproductive health and rights and GBV services, ensuring safety at health facilities through strengthened infection prevention and control protocols and practice.
The long and strict lockdown impacted three areas core to the SHE project: adolescent health and development, family planning (FP), and prevention of GBV. The solution was to establish adolescent/youth-friendly services, FP and GBV hotlines.
To get the FP hotline going, Jhpiego formulated guidelines and drafted promotional budgets. Health care providers from RHUs were identified as focal people and trained accordingly. A client calling the FP hotline is classified as a current user, new acceptor, adolescent or having FP-related complications, and is connected to a health care provider in the community.
“The assigned health service provider in the community (either the midwife or the community health worker) conducts the physical assessment and re-supplies the FP method at the client’s home or at the barangay (village) health station,” explains Jhpiego’s regional coordinator, Rachaela Maruhom.
To enable consultation and better redress of GBV cases, Jhpiego worked to establish a GBV hotline connection between violence against women officials stationed in the village and the municipality-based Social Welfare Development Office. According to Catherine Joyce Urbina, officer-in-charge and municipal social welfare development officer for Sumilao, the main cause for GBV in the area has always been economic challenges, which has worsened during COVID-19.
Many have lost jobs or income. Small food stall owners saw business dry up. Plantation laborers had no work. The hotline linkage between the village and the municipality has helped GBV survivors get help closer to their homes, says Urbina.
“Just last week, one of the barangay chairpersons called up for consultation, since a client who had suffered physical abuse was unsure about her case being filed in court. We counseled the client over the phone and explained the referral pathway to her.”
Without proper knowledge of the support she could receive from the municipality, the client might have returned home and continued to risk further violence.
The SHE project’s timely interventions — GBV hotlines and PPE — have helped address new yet critical challenges that have emerged from the pandemic.
Lucero explains why this assistance and partnership has been vital during the crisis: “In Sumilao, we are one of the poorest in Bukidnon province. We are the smallest in terms of land area. We are the second smallest in terms of income. So we really need support. I was more than happy that the [SHE] project extended beyond its scope. As we are part of humanity and this is a global problem, I am very glad that the project extended [support], especially here in Sumilao.”
Indrani Kashyap is Jhpiego’s Communications Specialist in the Asia Region. Jeremiah E. Sotto is a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Officer for Jhpiego in the Philippines.
