2 BARMM doctors, one service agenda

COTABATO CITY - The new Bangsamoro health minister and the former health secretary of the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao have agreed to cooperate in serving constituent communities.

The physicians Rizaldy Piang, newly-appointed health minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and Kadil Sinolinding, Jr., reached a consensus last week to help each other push the activities of the BARMM health ministry forward.

Sinolinding, an eye specialist trained in India, is a member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro Transition Authority, most known as the interim parliament of the autonomous region under Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Ebrahim.

Ebrahim appointed Piang as BARMM’s health minister only about three weeks ago.

Sinolinding had served as health secretary of the erstwhile ARMM government that got replaced with BARMM in 2019 as a result of the 22-year peace talks between the government and the MILF.

Sinolinding started as a “doctor to the barrio,” while municipal health officer of Pagalungan in Maguindanao del Sur more than two years ago and has since treated more than 20,000 poor patients, many of them in what are now BARMM barangays in different towns in Cotabato province grouped together as the Special Geographic Area.

Piang and Sinolinding’s cooperation in serving indigent patients began in 1989 in the Cotabato Regional Medical Center.

“After 31 years, we are back as partners in the delivery of health services for residents of BARMM,” Sinolinding said.

Piang had expressed appreciation of Sinolinding’s having reached out to him to assure of his support to the health ministry’s operation. (JMU)