VERGEIRE TAKES NEW ROLE IN HEALTH DEP’T

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire will be taking on a new role after serving for nearly a year as the caretaker of the Department of Health (DOH).

“She will be helping me deliver the goals. With her experience and previous job [as] caretaker of the Department of Health, she will continue in that segment of operations. She requested for that, and I gladly gave it because I think she deserves that,” Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said in an interview.

The new health chief also commended Vergeire for doing “a good job” filling the vacuum within the DOH in the past year.

According to Herbosa, the former officer in charge initially requested to handle only one region, but he decided to let Vergeire lead the Field Implementation and Coordination Team composed of four other undersecretaries, namely Dr. Nestor Santiago (for Metro Manila and South Luzon), Dr. Enrique Tayag (for North and Central Luzon), Dr. Abdullah Dumama (for Mindanao) and former police chief Camilo Cascolan (for Visayas).

Tayag, he added, will also be named the DOH’s chief information officer and head of the Knowledge Management and Information Technology Service to lead the digitalization plans for the health department and the health-care sector.

“That’s my priority and I’m going to make sure that we digitize health care so it becomes accessible in the most remote areas of the public,” Herbosa said.