A BILL requiring local governments to upgrade devolved health services and facilities, particularly for maternal care, has been filed at the Senate.  

“Our bill mandates all LGUs (local government units) to provide and create a facility for maternal care regardless of whether the cases are high or not,” Senator Mark A. Villar told BusinessWorld in a Viber message.   

“Essentially, we want LGUs to be proactive.”  

Under Republic Act 10354 or the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health, only “upon its determination of the necessity based on well-supported data provided by its local health office” should an LGU establish or upgrade hospitals and facilities.  

The proposed measure aims to encourage facility-based childbirth for all women and retain health workers who will handle these services.  

“My proposed bill aims to provide comprehensive and effective health services for our mothers, before, during and after they give birth,” Mr. Villar said in Filipino in a statement on Thursday.   

Senate Bill 1416 also proposes that no maternal health facility, whether public or private, may refuse to assist, admit, or accept the entry of a mother at the time of childbirth.  

The senator said it was “alarming” to know that the country had an increasing number of maternal mortalities, citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.   

“We can also attribute maternal mortality due to access to services and location of health facilities,” he said. “With the passage of the bill, I am certain that this administration will ensure access to health facilities for all expecting mothers regardless of economic status and location.” — Alyssa Nicole O. Tan

CUBA, globally recognized for its achievements in healthcare and medical advancements, has offered to share its technologies and expertise with the Philippines, according to its ambassador.  

“We are open and willing to work with the Philippines on any field that we can actually bring a benefit to the Philippine population,” non-resident Cuba Ambassador to the Philippines Florentino Batista Gonzales said during the Pandesal Forum on Thursday.  

“There are certain areas where we have accumulated an expertise and relative advantage, and one is the biomedical and biotech sector,” he added, “and we are willing to cooperate, willing to share what we have.”  

The ambassador said there have been initial talks on cooperation in the medical sector before the coronavirus pandemic.  

“We think we can help and we have offered that. Initial talks have been done before the pandemic, to be absolutely honest, but the pandemic happened, lockdown, so we are now trying to reignite that process,” Mr. Gonzales said.  

The ambassador noted that Cuba has developed five vaccines that work against COVID-19. “There was a very high rate of success.”  

He said they are ready to support the government’s goal of establishing a Virology and Vaccine Institute of the Philippines, which is important in advancing healthcare as well as in responding to pandemics.   

“All countries need to have the capacity to answer to that, we need to have the capacity to develop, not just sit back and wait, (or search for) where can we get them, where we can buy what we need,” he said. 

Philippine legislators have assured support to proposed laws that will establish the institute. — Alyssa Nicole O. Tan

A SENATOR has appealed to the Philippine government to consider investing in blue carbon initiatives to combat the worsening climate crisis.  

“We need to invest in blue carbon initiatives that will help protect our coral reefs, seagrass beds, lush mangrove forests, and other coastal and marine sources,” Senate President Pro Tempore Lorna Regina “Loren” B. Legarda said in a statement on Thursday.  

“Let us implement Philippine environmental laws in our efforts to bring back the bounty and restore the ecological integrity of our bodies of water,” she added. 

She explained that the blue carbon economy entails creating ocean sectors and businesses that are “socially just, environmentally sustainable, and economically profitable.” 

Sustainable management of marine resources and marine-linked sectors, she added, will be vital for climate change adaptation along the coasts. 

Planting and rehabilitating mangroves and seagrasses along the shorelines of vulnerable coastal communities will serve as natural buffers against storm surges, flooding, erosion and other climate hazards, Ms. Legarda said.   

A rich marine life, she pointed out, will also provide a reliable source of food, employment, energy and even recreation for many Filipinos.  

“The risks are rapidly growing not only for those in coastal communities, as climate change drives rising sea levels, warmer oceans and increasingly ferocious cyclones,” she said.  

“We need to recalibrate our strategies on climate change adaptation, invest in blue carbon initiatives, and embrace the available solutions that nature presents to us.” — Alyssa Nicole O. Tan 

THE AMERICAN government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has provided the Philippines another P53 million for a program on enhancing capacity in disaster preparedness and response.   

The grant, first announced on Oct. 12, will be used for the second phase of an information management system called the Early Warning and Decision Support Capacity Enhancement project.  

“Information and communication management is among the most challenging aspects in disaster response,” USAID Philippines Mission Director Ryan Washburn said in a statement on Thursday.  

The second phase will further develop data sharing and processing, rollout pilot systems in regional offices, and provide more training to deepen the integration of PhilAWARE.  

The initial phase of the project, implemented from 2019 to 2021, introduced PhilAWARE (AWARE: All-hazards Warning, Analysis and Risk Evaluation), which is a customized data platform that collects complex information on disaster risks, vulnerabilities, and other real-time data to assist disaster response operations.  

It also seeks to achieve a whole of government approach to enhance digitization, data sharing, and reporting. 

Since 2010, the US has provided more than P21.1 billion in disaster relief and recovery aid to the Philippines, boosting as well the disaster risk reduction capacity of more than 100 of cities and municipalities. — Alyssa Nicole O. Tan