HEALTH workers from the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) staged a noontime 'roving picket' on Tuesday to demand from the national government a salary increase for all health workers and to oppose Senate Bill 1869, also known as the Philippine Center for Disease Prevention and Control (PCDC) Bill, that will abolish the hospital.

'Right now, it is not just the infectious diseases that threaten us, or low salaries and unpaid allowances and bonuses, but the imminent abolition of our hospital,' said Romeo Garcia, president of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine Employees Association-Alliance of Health Workers.