Dr. Oscar M. Alfonso

Executive Vice-President

University of the Philippines

(Speech delivered during the 5th Recognition Rites of the U.P. Institute of Health Sciences at the DZR School of Nursing Social Hall, Tacloban City, on June 28, 1983.)

Thinking about Recognition Rites here at the Institute of Health Sciences, I was wondering how I could sum up the role of the Institute as a unit of the University of the Philippines, and how I could state its place in the scheme of things.

This is what I thought, and this is what came to mind.

With the Institute of Health Sciences, the U.P. puts its best foot forward.

The Institute of Health Sciences shows that the U.P.’s heart is in the right place.

The Institute underscores the U.P. openness to change.

And the Institute dissociates U.P. from the ivory tower, and puts it in the forefront of national and local problems.

You who are with the Institute of Health Sciences, you who make it run and make it tick, know better and understand better than most what I mean by the things I say about the Institute. I do not have to tell you – the faculty, the administrators, the students, the personnel – what the Institute is doing and what it is all about.

You know that the Institute does the U.P. proud, that the U.P. takes pride in the Institute as one of the best things it has brought into being in the last seven years. Attesting this is the recognition and acclaim accorded the Institute from other nations and by different nationalities, not alone our countrymen.

You know that the Institute places the U.P. in the service of the disadvantaged among us and identifies it with the underprivileged.

You know that the Institute is a bold breaking away from tradition, in a tradition-bound area where habit dies hard and innovation must commend itself most strongly to win adoption and acceptance.

You know that the Institute brings the U.P. to the grassroots, and places it in active collaboration with other agencies and institutions public and private, particularly the Ministry of Health thru Director Manuel G, Roxas, the Ministry of Local Government, and the Government of Leyte. The Institute puts U.P. in confrontation with the problem of rural neglect, the problem of brain drain, the problem of dropouts, and the overweening addiction to Western ways of doing things.

Indeed, if the Institute of Health Sciences did not exist, it had to be invented. And to it was.

Recognition Day today bids us pause to acknowledge so many – not by individual name, lest faulty recollection overlook someone, anyone, however inadvertently – but by nature or manner of their contribution; so many who have helped to bring the Institute where it now is – the founding fathers who conceived of the Institute and the singular manner it would make its contribution; the “midwives” and the amahs who saw the Institute through its birth pangs and its growing pains; the institutions and agencies here and abroad, that gave the Institute support and sustenance; all those who infuse the Institute with life and spirit.

But, Recognition Day means first, last and foremost you who are the stars of today’s ceremonies; the community health workers, the community health nurses and those of you who have earned the degree of Bachelor of Science in Community Health.

We recognize, first, your struggle to overcome the initial handicaps of your coming into and living in this world. We recognize your perseverance to make something of yourselves in the Institute of Health Sciences despite your handicaps and difficulties. We recognize the success you have thus far attained with great determination and unfaltering resolution.

We recognize, finally, the great responsibility that is yours. That responsibility is to share with your people in your own barangay your newly-found skills and knowledge; to use your skills for the benefit of your fellows in the barangay, and to pay back through your unselfish services your barangay’s sponsorship of you.

We have high hopes that will not fail the Institute. You will not fail your barangay. You shall persevere.