Lakas-Kampi CMD standard bearer Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro Jr. Friday vowed to strengthen the barangay health programs by providing improved training for health workers and upgrade their resources for a more efficient community health care.

In his speech before more than 3,000 government health workers at the Minglanilla Sports Center in Cebu City, Gibo also stressed the need to extend the public health programs to the country’s farthest barangays.

The 45-year-old former defense chief said the country’s health workers also deserve incentives as reward for their hard work in providing vital health care to community residents.

“We will look into the possibility of giving them more cash and other material benefits. They deserve such reward for their exemplary service to the public,” said Teodoro, the Harvard-trained lawyer.

He had earlier said that instability in the Maguindanao region, one of the poorest in the country, is being abetted by the lack of medical facilities, among a slew of contributory factors. “Now is the time to provide the region’s marginalized sector with quality health care that would be instrumental in saving the lives of many poor children in the province,” Teodoro said.

“We all have been harping about the need to develop the rural regions in order to make them our partners in economic progress. It would also be ideal if we would allocate sufficient resources to these provinces to enable them to construct more hospitals and medical facilities to treat the poor,” he said.

He said that funds for modern health facilities can be obtained with the assistance of the pork-barrel funds of local congressional representatives.

Teodoro said that giving Maguindanao’s poor access to quality health care is also an effective way to reduce crime in the region.

According to reports, many of the province’s small farmers and fisherfolk are forced into a life of crime due to their inability to provide their families with food, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities.