By Diether B. Navarosa
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. called the Department of Health (DOH) officials on Tuesday, Dec. 6, to amplify campaigns on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB) over COVID-19.
During a meeting with DOH officials in Malacañang, Marcos said that there are other looming public health concerns in the country aside from COVID-19.
“Let’s start refocusing again on the general public health concerns. Siyempre COVID has not come away. [We] still have to deal with it but let’s not deal with COVID… at the expense of all these other public health concerns,” he added.
Marcos also tapped DOH Office-in-Charge (OIC) Maria Rosario Vergeire on the agency’s TB-directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) program that intends to erase TB in the country.
Vergeire mentioned that the transmissibility of TB was born out of its re-emergence and pointed out that most cases came from lower-income individuals.
Vergeire also underscored the need to strengthen the Health department’s monitoring among TB patients as they are losing due to internal migration. The official also said that they are already partnered with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
“So mag-X-ray ka dito, for example, ‘yung province A, will just be sent to an app on the phone; in minutes you get your chest x-ray reading to artificial intelligence and right away you subject the patient to sputum examination, and in three to four hours they start your medication,” Vergeire said.
“So we’re trying to go around the different provinces to do this. Hopefully, we get to reduce the number of cases,” she continued.
Vergeire attributed the rise in current HIV cases to pandemic-related constraints.
“People were not able to go for screening, were not able to get their medicines because of the lockdowns, so what we did during the time of [the] pandemic, we were already sending per individual or per patient ‘yung kanilang mga gamot through LBC para lang makainom sila ng gamot,” Vergeire shared.
The DOH had reported a total of 1,383 confirmed HIV individuals from January to October 2022. Meanwhile, cases of Tuberculosis are leading to 1,387 for the first quarter of the year, according to the DOH report.
Acquired immunodeficiency virus (AIDS) is a chronic and potentially life-threatening condition that results from the advanced stage of HIV.
The official assured that DOH is working alongside lawmakers to combat stigma and discrimination that hampered people from seeking medical help. With report from Katrina Gracia Consebido – gb
