“MAYOR, I am anemic.”

This was the response of a nine-year-old boy to Mayor Belen Fernandez when she advised kids at East Central Elementary School to remain healthy and well after her storytelling time with them.

On her way back to her office at city hall, Fernandez phoned City Health Officer Ophelia Rivera and instructed her to send someone to fetch the sickly boy in his class.

The boy was brought to the City Health Office’s clinic accompanied by his mother where he was examined by doctors and given medicines. He has since regained his old self, is now hale and hearty and is again active in class.

It was this incident that inspired Mayor Fernandez to launch the first ever Junior Health Advocate (JHA) program in Dagupan where two pupils in each classroom are assigned to report to their teacher if anyone in their class are not feeling well, whether suffering from a cough or feverish.

While putting the JHA program at the Malued Elementary School along with City Health Officer Rivera, the mayor heard one pupil, “Mayor, my mother suffered a stroke.”

Immediately, the mayor sent a medical team to the pupil’s house and found his mother in bed while her husband watched over her.

She was examined and given medicines and physical therapists were scheduled regularly to visit her for needed sessions at no cost to the family.

And while in Barangay Salapingao where the mayor was consulting with residents, she learned that a woman failed to join because she suffered a stroke the night before. With City Social Welfare and Development Officer Leah Aquino in tow, Fernandez visited the woman in her house. They found her in bed unable to move.

On the mayor’s instruction, the woman was carried by her husband to a motorboat that zoomed to a landing area behind the Magsaysay Fish Market where a waiting city ambulance awaited. The woman was saved through the timely assistance of the city government.

Believing that a child at a very tender age will not tell lies, Mayor Fernandez said under the JHA program, the city government of Dagupan is able to reach out to the family through the kids.

The JHA program in every school, she said, will bring the services of the Dagupan City government even more closer to the people, Fernandez said during the KBP Forum on July 12.

“The city government now has the opportunity to find out who needs help from children,” said Fernandez. (Leonardo Micua)

 

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