Jun Gato

Ciriaco "Jun" Bayaras Gato Jr., the physician and three-term congressman who represented Batanes in the Philippine House of Representatives, died on September 21, 2026, in Manila. He was 66. Philippine news outlets including the Inquirer reported that he died of a cardiac arrest. The Batanes provincial government announced his death the same day and described the loss as that of a son of the province who had devoted his life, profession and public service to the welfare of fellow Ivatans.

Gato was born on November 16, 1959, in Sabtang, Batanes, and was raised in Itbayat, where he finished his basic education. He earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine in 1984 and practised as an ear, nose and throat specialist before entering politics. Family and professional roots in the islands shaped a career that later carried him to Manila as the lone voice of the country's northernmost province.

He entered Congress in 2019 under the Nationalist People's Coalition, narrowly defeating former budget secretary and Batanes representative Butch Abad by 238 votes. He was reelected in 2022 and again in 2025, and was serving his third and final term when he died. Throughout his congressional service he sat on the House Committee on Health, chairing it from 2022 until his death. Drawing on his medical training, he helped advance administration priority health measures, including Republic Act No. 11959, which builds specialty centers in Department of Health hospitals in every region, and Republic Act No. 12290, which established the Virology and Vaccine Institute of the Philippines.

As Batanes' sole representative, Gato was the province's principal advocate in national government. Provincial leaders said he worked to ensure that the needs of Ivatan communities were heard in Manila. Colleagues remembered him as a physician-legislator who kept health policy at the centre of his House work even as he continued to speak for a small, remote constituency far from the capital.

He is survived by his wife, Jade Banez Gato, and their two daughters. Tributes from the Batanes provincial government, House colleagues and Presidential Legislative Liaison Office officials followed the announcement of his death. Gato's official House portrait from the 20th Congress remains the public face of a doctor who became, for seven years, the national voice of Batanes.