A healthy plan towards health for all

by Former Senator Atty. Joey D. Lina Jr.

October 10, 2016
Share0 Tweet0 Share0 Email0 Share17
Theres now a practical strategy to provide health care that just might prove to be highly effective
and efficient: Conduct mandatory medical checkups on the 20 million poorest Filipinos to
determine exactly what medicines are to be made available and the number of health workers
needed locally.
image: http://www.mb.com.ph/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/w47-300x199.jpg
(Photo Courtesy of www1.udel.edu)
(Photo Courtesy of www1.udel.edu)
Health Secretary Dr. Paulyn Jean Rosell Ubial was a guest last Sunday in my DZMM teleradyo
program Sagot Ko Yan (8 to 9 a.m. Sundays), and our discussions focused on the Philippine
Health Agenda to be implemented by the Duterte administration in this country where, according to
the National Health Institute, six of 10 sick Filipinos die without ever seeing a doctor.
She said the free annual checkups will not only help prevent wastage of medicines that expire, but
will also detect illnesses that are not yet severe and can be treated at an earlier stage. Such
checkups include physical exam, urinalysis, complete blood count (CBC), sputum exam, blood
pressure check, diabetes screening, cervical cancer screening, and digital rectal exam for prostrate
cancer.
The 20 million poor to be subjected to the mandatory medical checkup are those identified by the
Department of Social Welfare and Development under its National Household Targeting System for
Poverty Reduction. Local government units will play a crucial role in its implementation considering
that health care is a devolved function.
Sec. Ubial said the mandatory checkup forms part of the three-pronged health agenda that also
includes universal health insurance coverage and a highly improved service delivery network
whereby a barangay health centers indigent patient needing an operation will be given full support
all the way to the hospital with expenses for travel even by habal-habal to be shouldered by
government.
With a battle cry of All for health towards health for all in the administrations health agenda, she
said the universal health coverage aims to spare the poorest of the poor from the high cost of
medical care in profit-oriented health service providers. The poor will be able to gain access to
medical services even from private hospitals as at least 10 percent of their patients should be
indigents covered by health insurance.
The health agenda shall also focus on ways to combat the high incidence of low birth weight and
widespread malnutrition and stunted growth of Filipino children, focusing on the first 1,000 days
from birth which is the most critical period in the development of the physical and mental well-being
of a child.
About one in three Filipino children are severely malnourished and stunted according to a study,
Socio-economy of Chronic Malnutrition in the Philippines: A Preliminary Key Trends Analysis by
2030, released last July by Action Against Hunger which pegged at 33.4 percent the current
chronic malnutrition rate among children.
The study said that lower-income countries like Vietnam and Cambodia are even faring better
than the Philippines. Only 23% of children are stunted in Vietnam while 32.9% are affected in
Cambodia. It added that children born from mothers with poor nutritional status before and during
pregnancy have a low birth weight (LBW) a likely determinant of stunting.

Another study, from the international non-government organization Save the Children, said that
malnutrition costs the Philippines P328 billion yearly and results in childhood stunting the most
prevalent kind of malnutrition which has permanent effects on growth and development.
It said the P328 billion in losses comes from the following: P166.5 billion in lost income due to
lower education level of workers who suffered childhood stunting; P160 billion in lost productivity
due to premature deaths of children who would have been members of the working population; and
P1.23 billion in additional education costs incurred by malnourished grade school repeaters.
So alarming indeed are the effects of childhood stunting that when I was Laguna governor, I
mobilized all our health workers and nutritionists to do their best to effectively deal with the
problem. They knew fully well that if not addressed, stunting will irreversibly affect the physical and
mental development of a child. Our efforts somehow paid off when Laguna province was adjudged
the best by the Nutrition Council of the Philippines.
As the improved and expanded Philippine Health Agenda of the Duterte administration goes full
blast in the coming months, hopes are high that no one, especially the poor, will be left behind in
the march towards a healthy Philippines.
E-mail: finding.lina@yahoo.com

Read more at http://www.mb.com.ph/a-healthy-plan-towards-health-for-all/#5g6Mr5pyvg4iRhU7.99