Health students and professionals gathered for an assembly at an undisclosed location and formally established a Makabayang Samahang Pangkalusugan (MSP) on August 2, 2025, reported by the Ang Bayan Ngayon on October 9. The MSP is the health workers’ revolutionary organization and a National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) allied organization.
MSP’s publication Ang Rebolusyonaryong Lunas said that students from various universities and young professionals including doctors in the assembly discussed the history of MSP from its founding in December 30, 1978 during the height of of the US-Marcos dictatorship.
The Ang Bayan on its May, 1979 issue, reported that the MSP on its founding day adopted a 7-point program:
1. Fight imperialist domination in the Philippines’ health industry.
2. Oppose the use of health as an instrument of the fascist US-Marcos dictatorship.
3. Develop health programs to strengthen the revolutionary mass movement both in urban and rural areas.
4. Gather the broadest possible health sector support for the armed struggle.
5. Uphold the democratic rights of health workers to organize and to fight for their genuine welfare.
6. Act to reorient the health education system and propagate a national and democratic consciousness on health.
The assembly elected the chairperson, vice chairperson, and three members who will lead specific tasks: propaganda-campaign-education, financial-technical-material support, and health service and training.
A doctor and a student nurse shared their experiences of integrating with the people’s army. They narrated said that comrades’ lives in the countryside is completely different compared to the comfortable and convenient life in the city and how Red medics persevered despite limited resources. They further shared that comrades in the guerrilla front strengthened their revolutionary spirit, and that experience affirmed the correctness of the revolution led by the Communist Party of the Philippines.
According to Ang Rebolusyonaryong Lunas, “health students understand the great responsibility, especially now, to continue to arouse, organize, and mobilize to reject US imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism.”
The publication further stated that the chapter’s formation is a historic and major step for health students because it proves that the sector embraces the people’s democratic revolution as the only solution to the worsening crisis and hardship of the Filipino people. “With fists raised, they firmly uphold the fundamental principles of MSP and will courageously carry out the tasks for the victory of the national democratic struggle with a socialist perspective,” it said.