Pasig needs health professionals

MANILA, Philippines — The city government of Pasig seeks to recruit more health care professionals, even non-residents, to boost the capacity of its centralized quarantine facility, Mayor Vico Sotto said yesterday.

“We need additional healthcare workers. So if you are a healthcare worker, I’m pleading for you to please apply,” he said in an online public address.

Sotto said “the salaries of our service contracts are much higher than that of the regulars.”

He said the city government needs more manpower should its plan to convert more areas of Rizal High School into isolation facilities push through.

“We still have available buildings, rooms and beds but we can’t reopen a new building if we lack the staff,” Sotto said, noting that at least 213 COVID-19 patients are being isolated in the high school.

Fallen hero

Meanwhile, the Valenzuela City government yesterday paid tribute to a doctor who died after being reinfected with COVID-19.

Kathlynne Anne Abat-Senen, 43, a neonatologist and infectious disease expert of the Philippine General Hospital and Valenzuela Medical Center, passed away on Sunday after being reinfected with the virus.

Abat-Senen, the only neonatologist in Valenzuela, was first infected last June. She was reinfected a month later.

Her husband Jerome Senen, also a doctor, received a P300,000 cash assistance from Mayor Rex Gatchalian yesterday.

The Valenzuela city council on Monday approved a resolution commending Senen, “who unceasingly performed her duties, rendered her services, despite… being exposed to risk and threat of COVID-19.”