Health facilities for BARMM constituents in Cotabato province launched

COTABATO CITY— Officials over the weekend launched a field health office for the 63 Bangsamoro barangays in Cotabato province in Region 12, but are administratively under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The facility, located in Barangay Batulawan in the newly-created Malidegao town close to Pikit, Cotabato, shall be manned by workers under the office of Bangsamoro Health Minister Kadil Monera Sinolinding Jr., who is also a concurrent member of the 80-seat BARMM parliament.

Sinolinding and other senior officials of the Ministry of Health-BARMM, among them the physician Zul Qarneyn Abas, told reporters on Monday that their field health office (FHO) for the 63 Bangsamoro barangays, grouped together as the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area, shall operate on a round-the-clock basis.

The MoH-BARMM shall supply the FHO with vital provisions, including ambulances, according to the physician-ophthalmologist Sinolinding, who had served as regional health secretary of Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that got replaced with BARMM in 2019.

MoH-BARMM officials had also opened to the public a Rural Health Unit in Barangay Batulawan that shall operate along with the newly-established FHO.

The 63 Bangsamoro barangays in Cotabato province, whose residents voted in favor of the inclusion of their domains in BARMM’s core territory in a plebiscite in 2019, are now grouped into eight municipalities, Pahamudin, Kadayangan, Nabalawag, Old Kaabakan, Kapalawan, Malidegao, Tugunan and Ligawasan, that were created via separate enabling legislative measures authored by the 80-member regional parliament.