By Prince Golez
Apart from fighting Covid-19, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. wants the Department of Health (DOH) to prioritize the fight against HIV and tuberculosis infections.
The advanced stage of HIV causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, a chronic and potentially fatal condition.
“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,” Marcos Jr. said in a meeting with DOH officials Tuesday.
The President also asked DOH Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire about its TB-DOTS program, which aims to eradicate tuberculosis in the country.
The DOH has become more innovative and is now going around the country to launch the primary care program that includes TB-DOTS, Vergeire told him.
According to her, tuberculosis has resurfaced due to its high transmissibility, and the disease typically affects people from the lower income bracket of society.
There are a lot of multi-drug resistant cases of TB because people can still buy anti-TB medicines over the counter, she added.
“So, for example, they have prescriptions that will be given by doctors who just need them… medicines for just one, two months, they will not finish their medicines and they become resistant,” Vergeire said, adding some patients receiving medicines from the government offer them to other people who haven’t consulted a doctor.
Vergeire said the DOH must increase its surveillance and monitoring as it loses TB patients due to internal migration.
To address present challenges, the DOH OIC said the agency has collaborated with the United States Agency for International Development after donating a tool using artificial intelligence.
“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,” she said.
“So we’re trying to go around the different provinces to do this. Hopefully, we get to reduce the number of cases,” she added.
Regarding HIV, Vergeire said the DOH made progress prior to Covid-19 but ran into roadblocks during the pandemic due to state-imposed restrictions.
Cases increased during the pandemic due to restrictions that prevented people from getting HIV tests, she also said.
“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 pandemic, we were already sending per individual or per patient ‘yung kanilang mga gamot through LBC para lang makainom sila ng gamot,” the official explained.
Vergeire said the DOH is working with lawmakers and with the judiciary to combat stigma and discrimination, which have been preventing people from seeking medical attention even if they have HIV symptoms.
“So we’re working with the other sectors so that we can be able to make the services more accessible,” she concluded.
