RP targets beating tuberculosis by 2030
The Senate Committee on Health on Tuesday, Sept. 14 started collating data and official position papers of health professionals and organizations before reporting out a bill for congressional passage designed to beat tuberculosis by 2030.
Senator Christopher ‘’Bong’’ Go, committee chairman, made the statement after conducting a hybrid public hearing on Senate Bill 1748 which seeks to strengthen the national program for the elimination of tuberculosis as a public health problem by amending Republic Act 10767, or the ‘’Comprehensive Tuberculosis Elimination Plan Act.’’
Asked by Senator Nancy Binay how much is needed to finance the measure once it enacted into Law, Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Mario Villaverde replied: ‘’P1.69 billion.’’
Villaverde told Binay that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the DOH’s tuberculosis program, adding that it tested only 556,000 TB patients in 2020 as against 1.67 million in 2019 or a decrease of 59 percent.
Among other causes, the DOH official cited ‘’health-seeking behavior’’ of patients who fear going to hospitals lest they might contract COVID-19; mobilization issues such as patients cannot go to health centers; and health workers are re-assigned to COVID-19 response.
Responding to a query by Albay Rep. Joey Salceda on what is the status of the DOH TB immunization program, Villaverde replied : ‘’Tuloy tuloy po (it is a continuing process)."
He said there are, however, bottlenecks due to government COVID-19 response.
But the flow TB vaccines into country remain unimpeded, he added.
In filing his bill, Go said that TB is a major public health problem in the Philippines.
In 2010, TB was the 6th leading cause of mortality with a rate of 26.3 deaths for every 100,000 population and accounts for 5.1 percent of total deaths.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report last March 24, 2019, about one million Filipinos have active TB disease.
‘’This is the third largest prevalence rate in the world, after South Africa and Lesotho. It is a highly curable disease. Yet, it is the number one killer among infectious diseases. Every day, more than 70 people lose their lives to TB in the Philippines needlessly. Many of these patients develop drug resistant tuberculosis which are more expensive and difficult to treat,’’ the explanatory note of the bill stated.
‘’Last April 23, 2019. the DOH and the WHO had launched an ‘all-out-war’ against TB. The DOH has committed to find, notify and treat 2.5 million with active TB and 1.4 million people with latent TB by 2022 and had pledged its fight to achieve Sustainable Development Goal of beating tuberculosis by 2030,’’ it said.