DOLORES, Eastern Samar — The late afternoon breeze was starting to get cooler as 24-year-old Elenita Vocis was finishing washing a pile of cloth diapers, mostly given by her friends and relatives.

In her sixth month of pregnancy with her second child, managing the household and preparing the catch that her fisherman husband would bring home for drying the following morning were routine.

On that particular Saturday afternoon, she was also waiting for the arrival of the barangay health worker who checked on her every two months.

“She will bring me my supply of vitamins today as I have a few capsules remaining,” she said. “These are donations from the Korean government.”

The coastal town of Dolores is one of the 16 municipalities in Eastern Visayas implementing the KOICA Maternal Newborn and Child Health Project, a five-year project implemented in partnership with the nongovernmental organization World Vision and the Department of Health.

KOICA stands for Korea International Cooperation Agency, the overseas development agency of the South Korean government.

“We believe everyone has a right to proper healthcare services. Through this project, we hope that access to proper healthcare services will finally reach many remote and underserved areas in the region,” said KOICA project director Jihwan Jeon.

Romil Jeffrey Juson, manager of the KOICA MNCH Project, says the project, which started in 2021 and would continue until 2025, aims to contribute to improving maternal and child health and reducing maternal mortality.

“The main objective of the project is to improve maternal and child health services in Eastern Visayas,” Juson said.

The project is being implemented in the towns of Palapag, Laoang, Pambujan, and Silvino Lubos in Northern Samar; San Jorge, Matuguinao, Basey, and Marabut in Samar; Taft, Dolores, Quinapondan, and General MacArthur in Eastern Samar; and Sta. Fe, Tabontabon, Tolosa and Pastrana in Leyte.

Juson said that since the project started, it has trained 3,848 barangay health workers on timed and targeted care for families in their conduct of home visits. The project has spent P20 million on equipment and incentives to support the BHWs.

The project has also constructed and renovated 22 health facilities, provided equipment such as incubators, ultrasound machines, and hematology analyzers to 54 health facilities, and provided 12 ambulances to local government units.

Reducing child mortality

Matuguinao, Samar Mayor Aran Boller said the program has helped drastically reduce the infant mortality rate in his municipality.

“Pregnant women no longer have to hike for hours to have their regular checkup at the rural health unit. We now have a health facility halfway to the poblacion where they can go,” Boller said.

Matuguinao is a geographically isolated and depressed municipality that was once a stronghold of the communist insurgency.

Boller said the program also provided them with an ambulance to transport patients who need immediate medical attention to the hospital.

However, while maternal and child mortality rates in Matuguinao and other disadvantaged towns in Eastern Visayas have decreased over the years, many provinces in the country are experiencing an alarmingly high number of infant deaths.

The Philippine Statistics Authority reported an increase in infant deaths from 14.3 percent in 2021 to 23.5 percent in 2022.

Among the contributing factors to the problem are the country’s inadequate health care services due to limited resources, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of coordination among health facilities.