Citation

Eala MAB, Maslog EAS, Robredo JPG, Pedro RJLS, Medina PVN, De la Paz EP, Lasco G. Lancet 2022; 399(10340): 2012-2013.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00785-1

PMID

35644150

PMCID

PMC9135372

Abstract

Filipino health-care workers have not been immune to the growing violence and impunity in the country since President Duterte took office in 2016. Since 2017, at least ten doctors have been violently killed in various regions of the Philippines. Six were killed in 2017 alone.1 In 2020, Mary Rose Sancelan, a city health officer in Negros Oriental, and the only doctor serving in the province's COVID-19 pandemic response, was shot dead with her husband. She was previously red-tagged by a local anti-communist vigilante group. In December, 2021, Raul Andutan, a surgeon and medical director in Cagayan De Oro, was killed in broad daylight for a reported bounty of US$3000.

Both the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 and a militarised COVID-19 response have enabled and exacerbated this violence. The Alliance of Health Workers, a local health-care worker union, was accused of fronting the Communist Party of the Philippines.3 Amid the pandemic, nurses were evicted for fears of spreading the virus,4 and an ambulance driver accused of endangering the community was shot for parking in a residential area.5 The escalation of offences eventually prompted the creation of the Mandatory Protection of Health Workers, Frontliners, and Patients Act.

The accumulation of such incidents causes insecurity—real or perceived—with consequences that are far-reaching. The absence of security creates medical deserts, depriving entire communities of health care, and causing severe and lasting disruptions to public health across the archipelago. The indirect consequences of violence against health-care workers are thus diffuse and insidious, but might assume disastrous proportions ...

Language: en