Philippines - Panay unified services for health (PUSH)

While the National Economic and Development Authority is the funding recipient, the Panay Regional Development Council, assisted by members of other government agencies, will implement the project. The project will train for 6 weeks, equip, and deploy from existing Rural Health Units (RHU"s) 600 Barangay Health Workers (BHW"s) - the core of the new delivery system - to identify the need for sanitation facilities and promote community sanitation, provide information on contraception, monitor the weights of children under age 6, initiate feeding programs, prioritize targets for an immunization campaign, screen and refer patients for curative care, record vital statistics, and instigate community action against barangay health problems. In support of community sanitation, the project will construct 280 drilled deep wells, 1,200 shallow driven wells, and 40,000 water-sealed toilets (reaching 80% of households) and improve 5,400 open dug wells. The project will also assist in organizing, with the help of RHU"s, 600 village drugstores stocked with commonly used drugs and owned, operated, and managed by the barangay. An estimated 100 RHU"s will be supplied vaccines for DPT, BCG, and tuberculosis immunization campaigns, and four Provincial Health Laboratories - one in each Panay province - will provide support services (e.g., water analysis, sputum examination). In cooperation with the Philippine National Nutrition Program, 600 barangay nutrition outreach service points will be established and manned by BHW"s to provide nutrition services and food to an estimated 10,000 malnourished children. Finally, BHW"s and the National Family Planning Outreach Program will establish 600 barangay-level family planning supply points and services.