MANILA, Philippines — Forty nurses under the Nurses Assigned in Rural Service (NARS) program of the Department of Labor and Employment have been fielded to villages in Metro Manila that were badly hit by storm Ondoy.

Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said the nurses will initially be deployed to the neediest villages in San Juan, Pateros, Taguig, Caloocan, Malabon, Mandaluyong, Pasay, and Navotas.

Roque said five NARS nurses will be deployed per critically-affected villages to render the appropriate medical services. He said they will complement and reinforce government’s rescue and rehabilitation efforts, as well as prevent sickness in the affected places.

Labor Undersecretary Carmelita Pineda, who heads the DoLE Project NARS, stressed the importance of mobilizing unemployed registered nurses to the poorest municipalities in the country in response to crisis.

She said these nurses would be the communities’ “warriors of wellness” who initiate primary health, school nutrition, maternal health programs, and first-line diagnosis; they would also inform about community water sanitation practices and do health surveillance, as well as immunize children and mothers.

Project NARS is a training and deployment project jointly implemented by the DoLE, the Department of Health, and the Professional Regulation Commission-Board of Nursing.

Designed to mobilize unemployed registered nurses to the 1,000 poorest municipalities of the country to improve the delivery of health care services, the project is part of the pump priming strategies under the Economic Resiliency Plan of the Arroyo administration to mitigate the impact of the crisis by saving and creating as many jobs as possible, while expanding social protection.

NARS simultaneously aims to address the glut in inexperienced nurses, promote health of the people, and bring the government closer to them.