Text by: Jennifer Manongdo
Photos by: Dr. Daisyrie Aidyl Pamogas and Sarah Hazel Moces Pulumbarit
AT the summit of Mt. Pulag, Dr. Daisyrie Aidyl Pamogas and her friends gazed in awe at the undulating landscape around them perfectly framed by a sea of clouds. Considered by some as perfect for their debut hike, Dr. Pamogas or Disay to her close friends, decided Mt. Pulag was the perfect spot to celebrate their milestone. They have just wrapped up their final clinical rotations at the toxicology department of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) and each will soon return to her own hometown in Leyte for a short break before their last year of medical studies.
On the day of the climb, Dr. Pamogas and her friends excitedly wore their hiking clothes and shoes which they thrifted from an Ukay-Ukay store in Malate a few days before the trip. Then, they joined a group of hikers who patiently climbed up the summit.
“Looking over the sea of clouds, we did not have an inkling of the kind of years we will soon face. We promised each other, and the skies above, that we’d be back as soon as we passed the boards. We were so blissfully unaware and so, so wrong,” she said.
The Trials that Passed
Just a couple of weeks after the group went home in 2020, the government suspended travel to and from Manila and an initial partial lockdown in Metro Manila. Soon after, Luzon was placed in
enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and later, the government imposed various types of quarantine to continue to avert the spread of COVID-19.
“The UP interns, including our class, were pulled out from our respective stations. We could have just stayed there in our homes and let the storm pass but we showed up the very next day to the rural health units and volunteered in whatever way we could with COVID-19 response,” she said. “In the UP system, the educators, the learners co-created rural technologies. People pooled resources to help those in need. We helped raise awareness both online and offline. And we raised our voices for those who cannot.”
Before the pandemic, Dr. Pamogas, then a nursing student, had been forced to learn resiliency and perseverance after typhoon Yolanda disrupted the lives of thousands of people in the Visayas region. She was one of the SHS scholars who showed up as volunteers that helped community leaders in attending to the medical needs of the survivors of Typhoon Yolanda.
“The students went to the municipal plaza and began attending to the sick and injured. Scavenging what little medical supplies left, the scholars, without instruction from teachers or school authorities, volunteered to help. There was no sterile equipment, no alcohol, or cleaning of the wounds, and there was extremely difficult transport as the roads were still filled with barriers,” she recalled.
A Doctor to the Barrio
After successfully completing her medical studies in 2020, the soft-spoken lady physician was accepted to the Doctors to the Barrios (DTTB) program of the Department of Health in 2021. She was assigned to the municipality of Dulag, Leyte, a community of over 50,000 residents, three hours away from her hometown of Matalom. The following year, she and the rural health team knocked on many doors and offered community members COVID-19 vaccinations. She worked long hours until she experienced burnout. “Super hate ko nang pumasok. Mabigat talaga sa loob,” she said about the experience. She regained her enthusiasm because she chose to focus on being a furmom and devoted her free time to anime and books. She also knew that she could stop working because she was supporting two of her siblings in their education.
Shortly after her DTTB stint, she was absorbed by the Rural Health Unit (RHU) in 2024. Now a general physician at the Super Health Center, her daily routine consists of home visitations and shuttling between the RHU and the Super Health Center to attend to patients.
Humble Beginnings
At 16, Dr. Pamogas joined her hometown’s barangay secretary for a door-to-door campaign to gain 75% of residents’ signatures and approval to become a barangay scholar to the School of Health Sciences (SHS) in Palo. Growing up with a father who worked as a company driver and a mother employed as a municipal clerk, she knew that a scholarship was her only chance to achieve her dreams. The self-confessed introvert remembered feeling so “intimidated” as she went from one house to another. Eventually, she secured the funding which led her to become a licensed midwife, licensed nurse, and licensed physician.
The experience instilled a lasting tenacity, a trait that now serves as a cornerstone of her medical practice.
“I find myself going back to this meeting every now and then, now that I’m somehow on the other side of the table. I’m thankful that I get to draft our municipal budget for health, propose and defend our programs and projects in the RHU, approve our local development plans with the eyes and the heart of a 16-year-old who is very thankful to have the chance to study college,” she said.
“This is the UP honor I hold in the highest regard. The honor of being the advocate for the younger me in the deciding vote. The honor of having the chance to bridge my own struggles, struggles of my family, of my neighbors, and of my community, to the people who get to decide,” she mused.
An Inspiration to Iskos and Iskas
In the 2026 Scholars’ Convocation on April 15, 2025, Vice Chancellor Bernadette Heizel Reyes invited Dr. Pamogas to teach part-time in the college of medicine. But at this moment, Dr. Pamogas said she could not bear the thought of leaving Dulag because “there is just so much work to do.”
To put it simply, she has grown to love Dulag and its people. She takes pride in showing up, first, for the community of Matalom in the wake of Typhoon Yolanda, then for residents in other municipalities as a vaccinator during the pandemic and third, for the residents of Dulag.
“The UP system is part of the Filipino community. And when our community is in need, we don’t think twice to help,” she said in her inspirational remarks during the ceremony. “The community is not in need of the best doctors. The community is not in need of the best pharmacists or the best scientists. The community, the country, and the Filipino people are in need of good people. Good and excellent workers who show up and do the work because the work is important and work affects and changes people’s lives,” she emphasized.
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