The University has set up another extension campus of UP Manila’s (UPM) School of Health Sciences (SHS) to bring medical and health education closer to remote areas of the Philippines in need of trained health care professionals.

President Emerlinda R. Roman, UPM Chancellor Ramon L. Arcadio, and SHS Dean Jusie Lydia Siega Sur were in Koronadal City, South Cotabato on June 15 to launch the extension campus, which is now the third SHS campus after the ones in Palo, Leyte and Baler, Aurora.

Together with incumbent Governor and Congresswoman-elect Daisy Fuentes, the UP officials signed a memorandum of agreement with the province, which will subsidize the operation of the school. They accepted a property donated by the province for the future SHS building. They also witnessed the oath-taking of the campus director, Prof. Amabel Ganzo, the faculty members, and the administrative staff.

The first batch of scholars to the UPM-SHS Extension Campus at
its temporary site at Sitio Pedregosa, Banga, South Cotabato

The launch program included the presentation of the first 34 students who are considered scholars because their studies will be supported by the local governments from where they hail. Most come from indigenous communities of Mindanao.

These launch activities were held at the South Cotabato Gymnasium and Cultural Center at Koronadal City.

UP and South Cotabato local government officials then ceremonially laid a time capsule at the site of the future SHS building on Carpenter Hill, Koro-nadal City. Initially, the school will operate at a temporary campus in Sitio Pedregosa, Banga, South Cotabato. The temporary site had earlier been inspected by the group.

The UPM-SHS aims to help solve the twin problems of the “brain drain” caused by the mass exodus of doctors, nurses and midwives for greener pastures abroad and the lopsided distribution of the available health manpower in the country, whose concentration in urban areas leave some 70 percent of Filipinos in rural areas without adequate health and medical services.

UPM-SHS extension campuses follow a special educational curriculum and offer ladderized courses in midwifery, nursing, and medicine. Unlike the normal admissions system in the University, SHS students are selected by the barangay or village on the premise that people who are actually members of socio-economically deprived communities will have greater commitment and, therefore, are more likely to return to serve their own underserved areas. Upon nomination, the selected scholar publicly pledges to return to the community to render service as a health worker. This pledge operates as a type of “social contract” entered into by the nominee and his or her barangay. In turn, the barangay pledges to provide moral and material support to the student while s/he trains at SHS.