Banning harmful insecticides and herbicides

IT I S VERY cl ear t hat t he Environmental Management Bureau ( EMB) under t he Department of Environment and Natural Resources ( DENR) has direct authority over the control, importation and distribution of chemicals that are classified as regulated, phased out or banned because of the serious risks that they pose to the environment in general and to public health in particular.

What is not clear is how the EMB is coordinating with the other government agencies that also have the indirect or indirect authority over these chemicals.

To name the obvious ones, these would be the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and of course the Department of Agriculture (DA).

How is the coordination done? Is there a technical working group (TWG) or a coordinating council? Perhaps when a major problem occurs, this could become a Cabinet matter?

It is very difficult to imagine how government agencies would act when their jurisdictions would happen to collide with each other, especially when it comes to certain regulatory functions.

For example, there are some insecticides and herbicides that should be regulated by the EMB, but are seemingly allowed or tolerated by the DA, even if these are already reportedly banned in some countries.

And since some of these products are reportedly cancer causing, should the Department of Health (DOH) also not play a role?

Early on, the DOH could actually get involved if it wants to, because the FDA is under them. Let’s not wait for something to happen before we act.

CHARITY BEDS IN PRIVATE HOSPITALS

It’ s not funny, but I have heard jokes about we Filipinos being so good in crafting laws in perfect English, and yet we are not so perfect when it comes to implementing these laws.

One such example is an Administrative Order (AO) issued by the DOH, mandating all private hospitals to allocate at least 10 percent of their total capacity to charity beds, meaning beds for indigent patients.

Probably, there is an Implementing Rules and Regulations ( I RR) out t here somewhere that I could not find right now. But as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details”.

As such, we will not really know what that AO entails, until we can see the details. One thing for sure however, I have not seen or heard of any system, computerized or otherwise, that could do the monitoring and reporting of compliance.

Almost always in most hospitals, incoming patients for admission are asked whether they have a health card or not. If not, it would indicate that the patient would most likely not have the capacity to pay, being probably an indigent.

In theory, all hospitals should admit all indigent patients or not, as long as their allocation for charity beds have not been filled. But who determines whether a patient is genuinely an indigent or not? And who is keeping count of whether the allocations for charity beds have been filled up or not?

I think these questions could be answered if all hospitals could hire regular social workers in their staff. But are they required to do that? And who is monitoring if they are doing it?/