Staying healthy

BEING informed is essential to being healthy.

As advised by health care professionals and advocates, having the facts enables a person to prevent practices or avoid substances endangering health.

Malacañang belatedly sought to allay the fears of a public made jittery by news of poultry workers that may be affected with bird flu by announcing that the strain found in Pampanga is not harmful to humans.

The clarification came only days after the media covered prominently the two “suspect cases” in Pampanga, the culling of birds, and the military’s interventions in the culling and clearing operations.

Yet, public health seems to take a back seat to official concerns for the health scare’s impact on the poultry and chicken-menu businesses.

Among health front-line stakeholders, communicating accurate and relevant information to the public should be among the priorities in defusing a public health crisis.

Health communication strategies should have government agencies tapping the press and social media to disseminate key information, such as the tests that are still being conducted with the two “suspect cases” since their symptoms of cough and fever may just be of influenza.

Another essential information buried under the ongoing coverage is that there are many strains of Avian Flu but only the H5N1 strain is harmful to humans.

The Department of Agriculture was reportedly still requesting tests to be made by a laboratory in Australia to confirm if the virus found in the culled stocks in Pampanga is of the H5N1 strain.

The ongoing case raises again the repercussions of an epidemic or even the fear of one: citizens panicking about their health, consumers boycotting products, entrepreneurs disposing of stocks and claiming government compensation, government belatedly putting in place biosecurity measures, and communities dealing with environmental pollution.

Given the impact on the public, why reduce the budget for epidemiology and disease surveillance?

ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio revealed that this is just one of the priority areas that will undergo “drastic cuts” if the P3.767-trillion proposed budget for 2018 will be approved, reported “The Philippine Daily Inquirer” on Aug. 16.

Tinio decried the practice of “pork barrel-like ‘lump sum’appropriations,” which disable the Congress and the public from scrutinizing the allocations for public programs.

The member of the Makabayan bloc said this “centralization of funds” reverses standard government policies, particularly on the practice of lineitem budgeting.

Due to the practice of hiding funds in the socalled soft components of programs, such as trainings, through lump-sum budgeting, Tinio said lawmakers and citizens are blind to the proposal to cut as much as 99.55 percent of the budget requested for programs of the Department of Health, for instance.

These “vital programs” with trimmed budgets include epidemiology and disease surveillance, reduced to P63.7 million next year from the proposed P14.2 billion, representing a 99.55-percent cut.

Other health programs that will feel the cut: environmental and occupational health (P3.7 million from P74.9 million); noncommunicable diseases prevention and control (P381.7 million from P2.2 billion); elimination of public health threats like malaria and schistosomiasis (P372.5 million from P894.7 million); and prevention and control of other infectious diseases, including HIV-AIDS and dengue (P1.69 billion from P1.97 billion).

The government’s scrimping extends to 66 regional and special hospitals across the nation, which will have a 28.45-percent cut in their maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE).

More than ever, citizens must have accurate and relevant information to empower them to be advocates and activists for wellness and sound government spending for public health.— Sunnex