Philippine Quality of Life & Health Issues

I was quite shocked when I read in the Novermber 2007 issue of Reader's Digest (Asia ed., p. 39) that the Philippines is way behind Pakistan when it comes to Environmental Health based on childhood mortality and disease as well as deaths from intestinal infections. So, okay, I am a racist, but in consideration of the Economic Intelligence Unit's (2005) quality of life index where Philipines is on rank 44 while Pakistan is on rank 93, this is quite incredible!

Not that I am putting down Pakistan and all the other countries that beat the Philippines on environmental health such as Sri Lanka (36), China (45), Indonesia (61), Bangladesh (76... right, hello Senators and Congresmen? Do your porks spell hypertension even among kids? Or are pigs' sty causing those infant deaths?), India (77), Mongolia (99), Pakistan (106) and Philippines (115).

Yikes!

Okay, let me tell you guys something.

When it comes to the rural areas and health services delivery, based on my experience in Santo Domingo, the municipality is divided into catchment areas --- these are chosen "center" barangays where rural health workers basically midwives, conduct vaccination. There are about 4-7 depending on the number of health workers and probably, size of the municipality.

In our catchment area of Lussoc, there are Borobor, Santo Tomas, sitio Quillayan and Callautit, and Nagtupacan are serviced, where vaccination occurs or vitamin supplemnts were given once a week. Sometimes, the health worker re-schedules on another day (equivalent to next week).

In their reports to the CEO (your mayor, Darling), the health worker visits the barangays four days a week, and charge from the taxes we pay "pamasahe" to and from the barangay.

Honestly, these health workers RARELY visit the barangays assigned to them, so much like your elected konsehal ng bayan, or any other regular tax beneficiaries who BS us tax collectors... We conducted random checking on the municipal health workers sometime ago, and you may try to do the same to find out...

During those "lucky" catchment days, before an infant is given a vaccine or whatever, every mother GIVES a "donation" which simply is baffling. Donations are for Faith healers, y'know. These donations are NEVER REFLECTED in the municipality "income", no receipt, acknowedgement, whatsoever. A clumsy smile was all I got when I "obliged" to donate to the health worker assigned in that catchment area when I had my baby injected with vaccine.

However, in our "model" barangay Santo Tomas, this of course never happened as the Kapitan Erning Tadeja is the ABC president, and it so happened he knew quite a few about government and finance, uh, including jueteng, my dear.

In other words, it is not just your District Representatives milking flashy "villa" houses and latest 4X4s from us Payless and Lucky Me taxpayers... it's all the way up and down to eternity. Or is it down to hell?

Below is the EIU index: