Bid to set up ‘botika sa barangay’ in Cebu City pushed

ZAFRA

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City Council is considering to establish pharamacies in the barangays or “botika sa barangay” within the health centers in Cebu City to store and distribute medicine to the residents.

Councilor Phillip Zafra, the author of the resolution, told CDN Digital in a phone interview, said there had been a need to prevent common diseases among the residents especially that the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) had not yet been finished and the operations were still limited.

Read more: CCMC to accommodate outpatients starting this month

“We really need to prevent diseases because without the CCMC, we cannot cater to many sick residents as of now. We need to prevent them from needing to go to the hospital,” Zafra said.

With each barangay having its own pharmacy, the residents will no longer have to go to the City Health Center to avail of free medicine as the medicine are available in their barangays.

Medicine for fever, common cold, diabetes, and hypertension will be available to the barangay residents after they have been checked up by the barangay health workers.

Zafra said that the city had always allotted a budget for medicine, but its distribution had been limited.

He said there would be a need to bring this service closer to the public.

As of now, the resolution have been forwarded to the Cebu City Health so that they can create a plan to implement the resolution since the pharmacies will be directly connected to the barangay health centers.

Zafra said he was hoping that these pharmacies would be established by next year because of the growing need of free medicine of the city’s constituents./dbs