Romel Dilag of PhilHealth updates the members of the Pantawid Pamilya’s Regional Advisory Committee during a meeting held at the DepEd Regional Office recently. Presently, he said there are more than 1.3 million Philhealth beneficiaries in Region VI and majority of them are identified as poor by the DSWD’s National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction or Listahanan.

Meanwhile, Beverly Salazar, Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of Pantawid Pamilya said as of July 22, 2014, the conditional cash transfer program has 322,599 household beneficiaries, who were also identified through Listahanan, coming from 133 local government units in the entire Western Visayas.

For the first time, members of the committee were also oriented on the Department of Health’s programs in Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas. This refers to communities with marginalized population physically and socioeconomically separated from the mainstream society. Committee members expressed willingness to work with the DOH in implementing projects in GIDAs.

Other NGAs like the Commission on Higher Education and the Technical Education Skills Development Authority also provided updates on the implementation of their programs and services that mostly benefited the poor./dswd6/Wenna B. Bendol