Health workers’ assembly highlights opportunities in medicinal plants

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LUCENA CITY –- An estimated 7,000 Barangay Health Workers (BHWs) from various towns of this province attended the annual Barangay Health Workers’ Convention yesterday, August 6, at the Quezon Convention Center in this city.

Guest speaker Dr. Jaime Galvez-Tan, former Secretary of the Department of Health, provided vital information about herbal and medicinal plants that can give an extra income to village health workers.

Governor David “Jay-Jay” Suarez, said this was the reason they sought Dr. Galvez-Tan as resource speaker in the said event, to present the BHWs with the opportunity to develop a new livelihood scheme with the help of herbal/medicinal plants.

Suarez also wants to promote the many benefits of herbal plants, especially for the BHWs as front liners in the implementation of health programs of the Quezon provincial government and the use of herbal medicinal plant as an alternative treatment to various diseases.

“The provincial government will go down to every village, will teach the farmers the importance of herbal/medicinal plants and hopefully the BHWs will also take part to convince their barangay chief that herbal medicine could be developed and considered as livelihood opportunity in their village,” Suarez added.

Highlighting the said convention is the distribution of nebulizers in every barangay of the province and providing them P4.9 million as incentives and new t-shirt uniforms to all barangay health workers.