By Alec Go
Malacaῆang on Tuesday said the proposal to establish a vaccine manufacturing facility in the country has the support of President Rodrigo Duterte.
According to a palace official, the president “wants to leave [it] as a legacy” and to establish self-sufficiency in terms of vaccine production for serious illnesses.
“The instruction now is the Department of Budget and Management should have a substantial amount of funding available so we can establish a vaccine institute to enable us to manufacture our own vaccines,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque stated.
Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez Jr. shared in the same briefing that the president told Budget Secretary Wendel Avisado “to allocate the money in order for us to be capable of producing the vaccine.”
“Napaka-intimate ng pagkakasabi niya sa amin (The way he told us was very intimate): ‘Even though I’m not anymore the president, I want to solve the problem of the Philippines in terms of securing [vaccines] and eliminating the disease that we have’,” Galvez relayed.
“Alam naman ng presidente na ang Pilipinas ang dami nating kailangang vaccine not only for COVID-19 (The president knows the Philippines needs a lot of vaccines not only for COVID-19),” he added.
Sec. Galvez has already brought up the matter to the chief executive on Monday night, saying that he believes the Philippines can “push forward” for self-reliance on vaccines.
He also floated the creation of the Health Security Act aside from the Universal Health Care Law in a bid to modernize the country’s healthcare system similar to the modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to “cope up” in case of another pandemic.
