October 21, 2024 (Quezon City) — The government and the Filipino people are obliged to reciprocate the service of our veterans and soldiers who served the country well, Secretary of National Defense Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr. stressed at the celebration of the 78th Founding Anniversary of the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO) on October 18, 2024, in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City.

“There is no substitute really for the obligation of the state through its citizens paying their fair share of caring for those who have served honorably and with distinction, and sacrificing their lives and sacrificing the quality of life that they could have spent with their loved ones,” said Secretary Teodoro.

To accomplish this, the Department of National Defense (DND) seeks to improve resource management to ensure that this obligation of the national government is “accomplished, served, and sustained.” The Defense Chief also pointed out that to effectively carry PVAO’s mandate, there is a need to decentralize not only the distribution of financial packages, but also the care and services rendered to veterans, such as access to health care through the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC).

According to Secretary Teodoro, the DND has proposed to “create the Veterans Medical Service, rather than a sole Veterans Memorial Medical Center.” This is envisioned to improve availability of medical services for veterans in different areas of the country, “with a minimum standard of care that the VMMC will impose on several regional and local medical institutions, to include medical centers that may be built up in the future.”

By upgrading VMMC’s skills, equipment, and competence, “we create the institution, we upskill it, without having to subject our clients, our stakeholders, to the cumbersome tasks of coming all the way to Manila to receive critical care, medical care, unless it is absolutely necessary.”

Secretary Teodoro added that along with upgrading access to medical care is the development and resourcing of financing for hospice care, as “a lot of bed space (at the VMMC) is taken up by those who do not need medical intervention on a regular basis but need hospice care.”

Aside from providing for the welfare of the veterans, the Defense Chief emphasized the need to guarantee and improve preventative care for the personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), because “a lot of diseases which manifest themselves at a later stage in life have been exacerbated by failure to detect the same at an early stage.”

Secretary Teodoro also took the opportunity to rally the support of the veterans’ community for the government’s “major shift of our defense posture, our defense paradigms,” stating that their moral voice is “an important component of the national defense ecosystem.”

With the marching orders of the Commander-in-Chief and the support Filipino people, “we will overcome without giving an inch against any of those perverse actors who seek to dislocate us from what is ours. By God, as your blood has sanctified and as your sacrifice has soothed,” Secretary Teodoro concluded.