Posted on November 25, 2022
“As we sustainably manage the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to use the lessons from the pandemic response to steer universal healthcare implementation into the right direction. With all these, we see the value of our healthcare workers as the backbone of our healthcare system,” said Dr. Maria Rosario Singh-Vergeire, OIC of the Department of Health and keynote speaker at the 23rd Grand Scientific Symposium. “As we continue to fulfill the promise of universal healthcare, step by step we will continue to gear ourselves up with the right arsenal for a stronger and more resilient healthcare system for every Juan and Juana.”
Sponsored by the University of the Philippines-Manila, U.P. College of Medicine, and the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine (PGIM), UPCM’s 23rd Grand Scientific Symposium (GSS) was held virtually via Zoom last November 16-18.
Entitled “Response, Recovery, Resilience: Roadmap to Crisis Management in Healthcare”, the symposium featured three days of sessions and convened a diverse group of experts. With more than twenty speakers who presented insights and perspectives, the Grand Scientific Symposium tackled the themes of building a resilient healthcare system, effective healthcare management, and adapting clinical practice during crisis.
On the symposium’s first day, presentations were given by leading experts who discussed hospital-disaster preparedness, community based disaster risk reduction and management, the utilization of home-based learning strategies amidst the pandemic, and the impact of the pandemic on health education. Dean Charlotte Chiong also joined as one of the speakers at the symposium’s twilight session with her presentation, “Vertigo: UPdates”.
Three sessions were unpacked at the GSS’ second day that cut across a broad range of topics including telemedicine, best practices in healthcare delivery during times of crisis, and cancer management. And Day 3 highlighted multidisciplinary cooperation as it featured presentations on health technology innovations, empowerment of healthcare workers, and the path forward to building health systems towards UHC.
As the country recovers from the pandemic, Dr. Apolinario Ericson B. Berberabe, Opening GSS Organizing Committee Overall Chairman, imparted a message to the GSS audience, “One major lesson from a public health perspective is that it is important to remember and recognize these events as part of our history. Because learning from these COVID experiences will give us the tools to analyze the problems we encountered and it will position us to see patterns that might otherwise be invisible in the present. And this will provide us a crucial perspective for understanding current and future problems.”
Exciting strides of the future are often built upon the learnings from the past. The 23rd Grand Scientific Symposium’s theme that reflected on takeaways from the pandemic achieved its goal by leveraging past experiences as groundwork for future healthcare wins. Converting hindsight into arsenals of healthcare service, management, and policy - the COVID-19 pandemic will not only be a chapter that has been overcome but also a springboard for a more resilient healthcare system in service of Filipinos.