PhilHealth Konsulta serves

Bohol Eskay Communities

CANTAUB, Sierra Bullones, Bohol, Nov 19 (PIA)—About 400 Indigenous peoples in these remote mountains trooped to the Cantaub covered court to avail of the extended health care package as promised by the Universal Health Care Law (UHC Law).

Afterall, the day is unlike any other day in their lives when by that time, everyone would have been in the high value commercial crops contract growing in the few plains that is watered by a cascade of the tributaries of the Pamacsalan River a few kilometers downstream.

That day, a mobile health care clinic, a troop of doctors and medical professionals swung away from the highway and drove into the village center where a free medical checkup and health education as well as a caravan of government information is to be set.

Some 15 kilometers from the town center and some 26 kilometers from the nearest tertiary health care facility, Cantaub just happens to be among the five IP communities that do not put up medical care high up in their priorities.

“We know that the IPS also need the services made accessible to them, and because they do not always have the means to get top an accredited Konsulta partner, we decided to bring the service here, and bring some frontline government services as well,” shared Tess Abella, of Philhealth Talibon.

Cantaub Barangay Chairman Conchita Sajol, who is in her second term, said her people, who are mostly indigenous people farmers of the Eskaya in Bohol, have been living in these parts of the mountain boundaries of Sierra Bullones, Duero, Pilar, Guindulman and Candijay.

A community that has been fighting to get their ancestral domain claims after they have been acknowledged and accredited as among the country’s IP groups, people here have always been self-sufficient, nurtured by their folk practices including traditional medicine.

Which, kind of, worked out with the kind of diet that the mountain forests and high-altitude high value commercial crops provide, a decent farming life and very limited access to health care benefits.

The passage of the UHC Law however opened up possibilities of preventive health care by early detection of any serious diseases or malaise, unwanted complications by early treatment and the access to selected effective medications and medicines.

As the National Health Insurance Program came about to provide health insurance coverage and ensure affordable, acceptable, available and accessible health care services for all citizens of the Philippines, also provided the means of medical subsidies for those who can-not afford medical care until the UHC Law, which democratized its access for all.

The development also allowed PhilHealth to offer its Konsultasyong Sulit at Tama (Konsulta), where every registered individual can be assured of free primary care services and benefits which include medical and health consultations and health education, health screening and assessment, accessible from a Konsulta providers.

Still with Cantaub residents’ health care not in their daily list of priorities, it was the PhilHealth, in coordination with the local government unit of Sierra Bullones through Mayor and lawyer Michael Doria, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples through Emmilou Gonzaga, Governor Erico Aristotle Aumentado and the Provincial Government’s Medical Outreach Unit, as well as International Care Ministries, which initiated the Konsulta mission.

Olimpio Beroy, 79 years old resident here said he came to get advice on a gnawing pain in his knees, an indication of an advanced state of arthritis and several age-borne body malaise.

“Salamat kay girasyonan ‘mi, kay jamo man mi ikapalit pod,”(thank you for including us in this service, we could not afford this) and having received free medicines covered under the Konsulta package, he hoped this would alleviate the pain, before he would come down to the fields again for harvest within the week.

Along with Beroy, were over 400 residents and IPs from nearby communities coming over to get the free services and brought home free medicines included in the Konsulta package. (RAHC/PIA_7/Bohol)

KONSULTA. Philhealth, in partnership with the Sierra Bullones Municipal Health Office, Capitol’s Medical Outreach Unity and volunteer groups brought in Konsulta in this mountain villages of Sierra Bullones to deliver the promise of the Universal Health Care Law.

MULTI-VITA-MEANS. Even kids who came in for the barangay’s big event did not come home empty handed as each carried home a bottle of multivitamins, health education, Information service and a poetry writing workshop.