Ramon ‘Ike’ Villareal Señeres
(First part of a series)
Manufacturers of herbal products are always very careful in saying that they are selling food items, and not medicines. That is actually true, but many of their products actually have therapeutic effects, even if they are required by law to say that they have No Approved Therapeutic Effects.
Much more than that, some of their products could actually already qualify to be labelled as herbal medicines or simply as medicines, except that they do not have the means to go through the process of validation and registration, unlike the big pharmaceutical companies.
In a country that has a population of about 100 million and a poverty rate of about 40%, it would be fair to say that half of the number of poor people, or about 20 million of our citizens are sick of one ailment or another, conditions that they could not cure due to their lack of access to affordable medicines.
Since free medical consultation is available in most public hospitals, we could say that medical attention is not the problem of the poor. Their problem on the other hand is the need to sustain their dosages of medicines, a challenge that is very difficult for them to face, because they have other basic needs to spend on, such as food.
Fortunately for some of the poor people, they are able to get assistance from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office and the Local Government Units, thus enabling them somehow to buy their medicines in order to stay alive, literally. Given the number of poor people who are in need of medicines however, it is very difficult for the PCSO and the LGUs to help everyone with all of the medicines that they need.
Since we are short of money in the face of this problem, we should be long on ideas in order to find the solutions, and one idea that is worth exploring is to go towards the direction of alternative health, coupled with the idea of also promoting preventive health.
“Knowledge is power” it is said, and “Health is wealth”, it is also said. Guided by these two pieces of wisdom, we should already take the basic step of promoting health information in every way that we could, utilizing every means of media communications that we could get our hands on. The promotion of health information is of course not a new idea, but it appears that we as a nation is not doing enough, in relation to the number of sick people around us who could possibly be cured, or at least get better simply by gaining access to health information that could change their medical condition even if they would not incur big expenses in doing so.
To the credit of many media organizations, there are already several radio and television programs that are promoting health information. In the overall analysis however, there is still a great imbalance between health programming and the other types of media content programming, not to mention the overdose of song and dance shows in our airwaves.
Add to that the fact that there are still many other media outlets that are still relatively untapped for purposes of promoting health information, for example, movie screens, cable television, video streaming, outdoor displays and mobile phones.
The Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Organization (UNO) monitors the mortality rate of member countries as a way of tracking their progress in delivering basic health services to their citizens. This appears to be a very realistic and practical measure, because it would be logical to say that the better the system of health services delivery is, the lower the mortality rate is going to be.
This is of course premised on the fact that every member country would have its own national strategy of delivery, and it does not discount the inclusion of alternative health and preventive health as part of the delivery process.
I do not know how the Philippine government is gathering the national mortality rate data, but as far as I am concerned, the best approach for data gathering is from the ground and up, from local data that should be consolidated into national data.
Following this approach, I believe that it should be the LGUs that should be collecting the data that should in turn be submitted to the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) for consolidation. Any other data that is coming from anywhere and gathered any other way should not be considered valid and should even be suspected of being fabricated.
In much the same way that “all politics is local”, I would also say that “all data are local”. This should give us a clue to the question of how and where we should get the data to find out the 20 million or so sick Filipinos who are among us. As I see it, our national government agencies (NGAs) have the tendency to macroeconomic data that are not based on microeconomic data that are coming from below.
The bottom line issue here is not just the integrity of the data, but also the ownership of the data. If the data sets are not coming from below, there are no local sources that would own the data and vouch for its integrity. Add to that the fact that the local owners of the data should also be responsible for changing it to make it truthfully better.
“Dynamic data” is a concept that our NGAs should adopt. What this means is that these agencies should not allow the content of the data sets to be “static”, in the sense that these would not change. This is the meaning of data ownership, meaning that they should not just report the data; they should also take the necessary steps to improve the data values, it being their responsibility to do so. Going back to the subject of the local mortality rate, the data owners could really reasonably target the lowering of the mortality rates in their own areas of jurisdiction, assuming of course that they would actually know what the real data values are.
For every data set, there is a corresponding data set that would in effect be its “opposite” values. In the case of the mortality rate, there should be a corresponding measurement of the longevity rate for instance. As far as I know, there is no system or method of gathering longevity rate data now, both in the local levels and at the national level. Needless to say, the methods for measuring the mortality rate and the longevity rate should be harmonized with each other, because in the final analysis, these two data sets are really just two sides of the same coin.
Much more than that, some of their products could actually already qualify to be labelled as herbal medicines or simply as medicines, except that they do not have the means to go through the process of validation and registration, unlike the big pharmaceutical companies.
In a country that has a population of about 100 million and a poverty rate of about 40%, it would be fair to say that half of the number of poor people, or about 20 million of our citizens are sick of one ailment or another, conditions that they could not cure due to their lack of access to affordable medicines.
Since free medical consultation is available in most public hospitals, we could say that medical attention is not the problem of the poor. Their problem on the other hand is the need to sustain their dosages of medicines, a challenge that is very difficult for them to face, because they have other basic needs to spend on, such as food.
Fortunately for some of the poor people, they are able to get assistance from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office and the Local Government Units, thus enabling them somehow to buy their medicines in order to stay alive, literally. Given the number of poor people who are in need of medicines however, it is very difficult for the PCSO and the LGUs to help everyone with all of the medicines that they need.
Since we are short of money in the face of this problem, we should be long on ideas in order to find the solutions, and one idea that is worth exploring is to go towards the direction of alternative health, coupled with the idea of also promoting preventive health.
“Knowledge is power” it is said, and “Health is wealth”, it is also said. Guided by these two pieces of wisdom, we should already take the basic step of promoting health information in every way that we could, utilizing every means of media communications that we could get our hands on. The promotion of health information is of course not a new idea, but it appears that we as a nation is not doing enough, in relation to the number of sick people around us who could possibly be cured, or at least get better simply by gaining access to health information that could change their medical condition even if they would not incur big expenses in doing so.
To the credit of many media organizations, there are already several radio and television programs that are promoting health information. In the overall analysis however, there is still a great imbalance between health programming and the other types of media content programming, not to mention the overdose of song and dance shows in our airwaves.
Add to that the fact that there are still many other media outlets that are still relatively untapped for purposes of promoting health information, for example, movie screens, cable television, video streaming, outdoor displays and mobile phones.
The Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Organization (UNO) monitors the mortality rate of member countries as a way of tracking their progress in delivering basic health services to their citizens. This appears to be a very realistic and practical measure, because it would be logical to say that the better the system of health services delivery is, the lower the mortality rate is going to be.
This is of course premised on the fact that every member country would have its own national strategy of delivery, and it does not discount the inclusion of alternative health and preventive health as part of the delivery process.
I do not know how the Philippine government is gathering the national mortality rate data, but as far as I am concerned, the best approach for data gathering is from the ground and up, from local data that should be consolidated into national data.
Following this approach, I believe that it should be the LGUs that should be collecting the data that should in turn be submitted to the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) for consolidation. Any other data that is coming from anywhere and gathered any other way should not be considered valid and should even be suspected of being fabricated.
In much the same way that “all politics is local”, I would also say that “all data are local”. This should give us a clue to the question of how and where we should get the data to find out the 20 million or so sick Filipinos who are among us. As I see it, our national government agencies (NGAs) have the tendency to macroeconomic data that are not based on microeconomic data that are coming from below.
The bottom line issue here is not just the integrity of the data, but also the ownership of the data. If the data sets are not coming from below, there are no local sources that would own the data and vouch for its integrity. Add to that the fact that the local owners of the data should also be responsible for changing it to make it truthfully better.
“Dynamic data” is a concept that our NGAs should adopt. What this means is that these agencies should not allow the content of the data sets to be “static”, in the sense that these would not change. This is the meaning of data ownership, meaning that they should not just report the data; they should also take the necessary steps to improve the data values, it being their responsibility to do so. Going back to the subject of the local mortality rate, the data owners could really reasonably target the lowering of the mortality rates in their own areas of jurisdiction, assuming of course that they would actually know what the real data values are.
For every data set, there is a corresponding data set that would in effect be its “opposite” values. In the case of the mortality rate, there should be a corresponding measurement of the longevity rate for instance. As far as I know, there is no system or method of gathering longevity rate data now, both in the local levels and at the national level. Needless to say, the methods for measuring the mortality rate and the longevity rate should be harmonized with each other, because in the final analysis, these two data sets are really just two sides of the same coin.
No comments:
Post a Comment