That was the question Kadil Monera Sinolinding, Jr., health minister of the Bangsamoro regional government, raised in his message to the pioneer 34 graduates of the medical school in the state-run University of Southern Mindanao (USM) in Kabacan, Cotabato during their graduation rite on Friday, July 18.

Sinolinding, a physician-ophthalmologist trained in India, told the medical course graduates that Abdulrauf Macacua, the chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), is wishing for them to work in BARMM once they become full-fledged doctors of medicine.

Sinolinding, who was guest of honor and speaker in the graduation rite of the first, or pioneer batch of graduates in the USM’s College of Medicine, started as a typical “doctor to the barrio,” serving as municipal health officer of the adjoining Datu Montawal and Pagalungan towns in Maguindanao del Sur, both near Cotabato’s Kabacan town, where the campus of the university is located.

The event was held at the sprawling USM campus in the town center of Kabacan, Sinolinding’s hometown.

Sinolinding had earned numerous awards over the years for his public service feats and was even named, in 2021, as of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World by the Jaycees International, an award that he and nine others from different countries received during a symbolic ceremony in Europe.

The JCI award was in recognition of Sinolinding’s humanitarian and voluntary leadership as community worker, treating sick marginalized Muslims, Christians and non-Moro indigenous people in areas then covered by the now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The ARMM, created in 1992, was replaced in early 2019 with a more empowered BARMM, a product of 22 years of negotiations between Malacañang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a peace process that Sinolinding supported. Macacua, BARMM’s current chief minister, is chief of the MILF’s Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces.

Sinolinding, while at the USM campus, promised the 34 graduates of the university’s medical school cash rewards if anyone from them would rank first or second in the list of top ten passers of the national medical licensure examination that they shall take soon.

Ten of the 34 pioneer graduates of the USM medical school were scholars of the Ministry of Health-BARMM. The BARMM government has its Bangsamoro Medical Scholarship Program, or BMSP, for USM students, set via an agreement forged on July 12, 2021 by the university administration and the MoH-BARMM. (JULY 20, 2025)