Various groups have called on the public to remain vigilant over public spending and the politicizing of government programs amid the still poor pandemic response and the looming national elections next year.
Health workers held a protest action today as they continue to assail how they were deceived by the Department of Health (DOH) when they were repeatedly told that there is no appropriated budget for their due pay and benefits.
Courage said that at the onset of the pandemic, they have called for free mass testing and treatment, provision of sufficient PPEs for frontliners, and rightful compensation of the health hazard faced by all public sector employees in the line of duty but were not met by the government.
“The Duterte administration should stop this drama. This is not helping the people in getting due social services at a time when the state of our health care system is worsening."
“[The government’s] response now is no different from the 2nd ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) — impose a lockdown and hope transmission slows down.”
With the government’s inability to control the rise of COVID-19 cases in the country, community health advocates are up in arms over the government's response that, for the last 500 or so days, mainly resorted to stricter lockdowns.
To identify close contacts up to third or fourth degree, community health advocates said that contact tracing has to rely on an already robust public health system which the Philippines does not have in the first place.
With President Duterte down to his last months in office, community health advocates say health spending is an election issue that must be addressed – a first step in undoing the sorry state of the country’s public health care under an administration that won with a promise of tapang at malasakit.
A World Bank study found that children’s feces are potentially riskier than adult feces due to higher prevalence of diarrhea and pathogens.
Restricting mobility is meant to give government the time to build its capacities to stop the spread of the virus. But what happens when a government only resorts to a lockdown and nothing else?
Health experts and lawmakers are alarmed over the Philippine government's deafening silence on moves of several countries to press for the waiver of TRIPS on medicines, particularly on COVID-19 vaccines.
It has been two months since the Philippine government began its vaccine rollout but the country is far from inoculating at least one percent of the population as public hesitancy on vaccine efficacy and safety remains.
“This is a matter of survival to us, because we need to bring back good governance,” said retired Associate Justice Antonio Carpio.
“We hope that Secretary Duque understands that every minute in our lives as health workers matters. Many from our ranks got sick and succumbed to COVID-19 already. We can no longer afford to spend more time to wait in order to get our rightful benefits and demands."
The national government has also allowed private enterprises and local government units (LGUs) to procure vaccines for their constituents and employees provided that they sign a tripartite agreement with the national government and vaccine manufacturers. The tripartite agreement is meant to ensure vaccine manufacturers that the national government would cover indemnification and the cost of adverse effects.
At first glance, it seems reassuring that the Philippines’ cumulative 884,783 COVID-19 cases as of April 13 is just around half of Indonesia’s 1.58 million infections. However, the Philippines’ 165,534 active cases is the highest in the region and more than Indonesia’s 108,599 active cases – even if Indonesia’s population is over two-and-a-half times bigger.
AHW said understaffing schemes by hospitals force health workers to be on duty for at least 12 hours or even 24 hours while some hospitals only have skeletal forces.
Halfway into the week-long stricter lockdown in the capital, health workers are still in agony over their unmet demands, with the government failing to address their call to look into their health, economic, and social well-being as they combat the pandemic on the ground.
"To match the standards of World Health Organization's positivity rate on a daily basis, We should be testing at least 130,000 individuals per day, at least 90,000 in NCR, at the current rate that we are going."
The latest IATF resolution released on Sunday lacks at least six policies that are crucial to addressing a worsening pandemic, especially when you are implementing a lockdown.
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