BTA member: Laws on medical services needed
BANGSAMORO NEWS UPDATES • 10:15 AM Thu Sep 22, 2022
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By:
John M. Unson
The regional government center of the Bangsamoro region. (John Unson)
KABACAN, North Cotabato - A physician in the 2022-2025 Bangsamoro parliament said Wednesday he will focus on proposals for regional edicts that can ensure extensive and non-costly medical services to residents of the autonomous region.
The eye specialist Kadil Sinolinding, Jr. told reporters via online Messenger Thursday he will flex his medical outreach activities now that he will serve indigent patients more of being a member of 80-seat Bangsamoro Transition Authority, or BTA.
The BTA is also known as the interim parliament of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
“Personally I am certain President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. will do his best to help the Bangsamoro leadership improve the delivery of health services to people in all municipalities and cities in the autonomous region,” Sinolinding said.
Staff members of Sinolinding are now studying approaches on how to best boost the delivery of health services to the Muslim, Christian and indigenous communities in BARMM.
President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. told members of the BTA, during an engagement here last September 15, that he will do his best to make BARMM rise as a peaceful and progressive region.
The President also assured members of the regional parliament, led by Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim, of Malacañang’s support for regional peace and development initiatives.
“By and large, there is this commitment. We only have to put out our plans and focus on specific legislations that can provide our people with extensive medical services. The Ministry of Health is doing its best. We just have to complement its efforts,” Sinolinding said.
The multi-awarded Sinolinding started as a government “doctor to the barrio” in the early 1990s, serving as health officer for the towns of Pagalungan and Montawal in the second district of Maguindanao.
He had served more than 20,000 indigent patients from the Moro, non-Moro and indigenous communities in central Mindanao, in Region 9 and other provinces in the past two decades.
Sinolinding also was regional secretary of the health department of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao before it got replaced with BARMM in early 2019.
The creation of BARMM is a result of 22 years of peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.