A gravely compromised DOH
It’s no small irony that, despite being the agency primarily tasked to oversee the country’s health and well-being, the Department of Health (DOH) is itself never far from being a fragile, sickly institution.
It’s been buffeted by controversy after controversy, especially during the Duterte years when Francisco Duque III headed the agency.
Under him, for instance, public health personnel took to the streets several times even at the height of the pandemic to demand the release of their overdue allowances and benefits.
It wasn’t just incompetence; Duque also came under a cloud of suspicion for a series of questionable actions, such as leasing his family’s property to PhilHealth, the state health insurer and a DOH-attached agency of which he was ex-officio chair.
He was front and center, too, in the infamous Pharmally scandal, where substandard and overpriced pandemic medical supplies were purchased for billions of pesos from an undercapitalized supplier that was accorded favorable treatment due to its ties to a close Duterte adviser. It was Duque who provided the budget for the anomalous purchase, by transferring P41.4 billion in DOH funds to the procurement arm of the Department of Budget and Management.
Competing with Duque
After the turmoil of the Duque years, the new Marcos administration should have prioritized strengthening the DOH, especially since the country was still emerging from the ravages of the pandemic in 2022. But the Palace took a full year before it appointed a permanent chief for the department, finally designating Teodoro Herbosa to lead the health sector on June 5, 2023.
Herbosa had been a former health undersecretary—an insider experience that was expected to boost his efforts in cleaning house, rooting out inefficiency and corruption in his department, and ensuring that Filipinos have better access to quality health care no matter their status, as mandated by the Universal Health Care law.
But nearly three years into his term, Herbosa seems to be competing with Duque instead in the number and frequency of controversies that are getting attached to his name.
As of April 2026, Herbosa is facing multiple criminal and administrative charges at the Office of the Ombudsman. The complaints were filed against him and other agency personnel by a group of individuals who call themselves “concerned DOH employees.”
Negligence and mismanagement
Among their allegations is that Herbosa and 16 other DOH officials, through negligence and mismanagement, allowed massive amounts of government-procured medicine—including tuberculosis and measles vaccines, as well as family planning drugs, psychiatric medications, and HIV antiretrovirals—to expire in warehouses, effectively depriving patients of these urgent treatments.
According to the complainants, Herbosa, et al. ignored warnings and even attempted a cover-up of the wastage, which is estimated to have cost the government P1.4 to P1.5 billion.
Another complaint alleges that Herbosa and other officials rigged the procurement of mobile primary care facilities worth P1.8 billion, essentially by manipulating technical specifications to favor a preferred supplier. The “conspiracy” and “serious irregularities” behind the transaction constitute graft and a violation of the government’s procurement laws, said the complainants.
Before these, Herbosa had been hit with graft charges over the unauthorized allocation of P44.6 million worth of drugs to a private organization—the Rotary Club of Quezon City Circle, which had no authority or license to dispense psychiatric medicines.
In August 2025, he faced questions regarding an alleged unliquidated cash transfer of P1.29 billion to United Nations’ Children’s Fund for vaccines and essential drugs from February to July 2024.
Unhampered investigation
Even his media appearances have not escaped scrutiny. His stint as radio anchor, along with two other high-ranking DOH officials, were denounced by DOH personnel not only as alleged instances of conflict of interest and “self-promotion,” but as occasions for graft.
Specifically, a P98-million contract for “media placement in various platforms and co-produced live program for the promotion of DOH health services and programs” was allegedly made in favor of the media company that owned the radio show where Herbosa and cohorts served as hosts.
Rumors swirled in August last year that the Ombudsman had ordered the preventive suspension of Herbosa, but the speculation didn’t pan out. He remains in office to this day, even as cases against him continue to multiply and the DOH itself is unable to take a breather from all the reputational heat its leader generates.
It’s time Malacañang and the relevant authorities heeded the complainants’ call for Herbosa and his co-respondents to be removed from their posts at least temporarily, to allow for a full and unhampered investigation into these serious allegations. A gravely compromised, debilitated health department is not only an administrative headache, but one that poses life-and-death risks for the country and its people.
