Finally, a solution to the 911 problem

FOR SO MANY years now, I have been trying to advocate the adoption of a nationwide emergency call center, similar to the 911 system in the United States.

I was very happy when former President Rodrigo Duterte signed an Executive Order (EO) mandating the implementation of that national system, also using the 911 short code. Sad to say, the term of President Duterte already ended, but we still do not have a nationwide 911 system, supposedly due to technical problems.

Even when he was still Executive Director of the Emergency 911 system ( E911), retired general Diosdado Valeroso and I have been trying to fix the problem. Now that he is no longer the Executive Director, we are still working together to solve it, and it now appears that we might have discovered a breakthrough solution.

To our surprise, we concluded that what is needed is a technical solution to what appears to be a “political” problem. No, it has nothing to do with partisan politics. I am just calling it “political”, for lack of a better term.

To go straight to the point, we concluded that the local mayors did not want to shift to the 911 system because they did not want to “waste’ their local systems such as 117 and 168. In the breakthrough solution that General Valeroso and I designed, all local calls to the local numbers will be automatically routed and switched over to the national 911 number. Problem solved.

COMBINING ANIMAL RELATED LOCAL FUNCTIONS

Some local government units ( LGUs) have city or municipal veterinary officers ( MVOs), and some do not. Obviously, it all depends on the availability of budgets, or the acceptability of certain public health standards.

While some LGU officials might argue that animal health is not their priority, I could also argue that uncontrolled animal population could pose a threat to public health.

As I understand it, MVOS are mostly focused on farm animals, and not on pet animals or stray dogs and cats. Aside from that, it is unclear whether they could also treat victims of animal bites, if and when the municipal health officers (MHOs) are not available.

Recently, it was announced that Bhutan is the first country in the world that has completed the 100% sterilization and vaccination of street dogs. That is a huge achievement, considering that some countries that are richer could not even take care of their homeless people who are living in the streets.

I will not even ask how many percent of our street dogs have been sterilized and vaccinated, because many of our LGU officials are probably not aware of that need. Be that as it may, there is still a need to provide free veterinary services for the poor people who could not afford it.

As a practical approach, perhaps the MVOs could be tasked to do that as well, so that there will be no need to hire new veterinary doctors. Just Google the Bhutan story./

All local calls to the local numbers will be automatically routed and switched over to the national 911 number. Problem solved.