The Department of Health (DOH) plans to establish more than 100 specialty centers this year as part of its efforts to capacitate rural facilities and make medical services accessible outside town centers. The project, which is under the Philippine Health Facility Development Plan 2020-2040, will give priority to rural areas where there are no specialized centers or any kind of healthcare facility.
In its year-end report, the DOH said the country now has a total of 46 functional specialty centers in the provinces. These included the six specialty centers completed in 2021. These specialty centers were put up within hospitals to ensure that specific ailments needing special care and treatment were catered to.
For this year, the House of Representatives has also proposed establishing one specialty hospital each in northern Luzon, southern Luzon, Visayas, northern Mindanao, and southern Mindanao. The House of Representatives is also proposing that the additional specialty hospitals in the country should include branches of the Philippine Heart Center, the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, the Lung Center of the Philippines, the Philippine Children’s Medical Center, and the soon-to-be established Philippine Cancer Center.
(Sources: The Philippine Daily Inquirer, GMA News Online)
