QuestionsQuestions (MEMORANDUM ORDER NO. 197)
It aims to strengthen health and dental services in rural areas by creating and staffing rural health facilities and public health positions, and by appropriating funds for medicines, supplies, equipment, and expansion.
District Health Officers are henceforth called Provincial Health Officers.
Presidents of Sanitary Divisions, Municipal Maternity and Charity Clinic Physicians, and heads of units of Rural Health Units (FOA/PHILCUSA) of the Bureau of Health are henceforth named Municipal Health Officers.
There shall be one Provincial Health Officer in each province and a Public Health Dentist in each congressional district.
A congressional district with a population of over 150,000 shall have an additional Public Health Dentist.
They must be created immediately upon the approval of the Act so that each congressional district shall have one dentist.
A Category 1 rural health unit consists of one municipal health officer as head, one public health nurse, one midwife, and one sanitary inspector.
A Category 2 rural health unit consists of one physician or public health nurse as head, and one midwife or sanitary inspector.
Each municipality or group of municipal districts with a population of not less than 5,000 shall have a Category 1 rural health unit.
If a municipality has more than 35,000 inhabitants, it shall have an additional rural health unit of Category 2.
If the public service demands, the Director of Health may, upon approval of the Secretary of the Department of Health, regroup neighboring barrios and assign rural health units of whatever category the circumstances warrant.
It creates four positions of pharmacists detailed in the central office of the Bureau of Health, and they may be assigned to provinces as conditions warrant.
The existing Presidents of Sanitary Divisions, Municipal Maternity and Charity Clinic Physicians, and Heads of Rural Health Unit units become Municipal Health Officers and remain in their present stations until the Secretary of Health fixes their new assignments upon the recommendation of the Director of Health.
The additional rural health units required under Section 2(b) must be established in four years from the effectivity of the Act.
Municipal Health Officer: P3,000.00–P4,200.00; Public Health Dentist: P2,400.00–P3,120.00; Midwife: P1,440.00–P1,800.00 (similar ranges are provided for other positions in the Act).
It states that public health nurses in this Act shall have no cash allowance granted to public health nurses in lieu of quarters, subsistence, and laundry under Republic Act No. 649.
Upon recommendation of the Director of Health, the Secretary must promulgate rules and regulations governing the duties, functions, and distribution of public health nurses, midwives, sanitary inspectors, and public health dentists to intensify rural public health services and sanitation work.
If the Health Fund under Section 1012 of the Revised Administrative Code is insufficient to cover salaries of personnel created under the Act paid regularly from that fund, the balance shall be taken from the fund later provided by the Act (i.e., the appropriated funds under its provisions).
It appropriates P4,000,000 (or so much thereof as may be necessary). Of this, not less than P700,000 is for purchase of medical and dental supplies, and P300,000 is for purchase of medical and dental equipment and instruments. The P4,000,000 covers fiscal year 1954–1955.
It provides that one bullion peso shall be appropriated thereafter in addition to the preceding year’s total appropriation to establish additional rural health units each year to complete 1,300 rural health units, and to add Public Health Dentists to complete the goal of 102 Public Health Dentists.