UNDP sees Philippines failing on three fronts

Alleviating poverty, curbing HIV, managing climate change
 
Because of global recession, the Philippines has not kept up with meeting the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations, a UN official said Thursday.

Renaud Meyer, UN Development Program country director for the Philippines, said the country is failing in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and providing universal access to primary education, two of the MDGs the United Nations has set to reduce global poverty in 2015. The six other MDGs are promoting gender equality, reducing child and maternal mortality, combating HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, promoting environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.

“The overall situation in the Philippines is not rosy. There is nothing to be comfortable with,” Meyer told reporters in a chance interview.

He cited figures from the National Statistics Office that reveals the worsening poverty situation in the country.

Meyer added it is only doing well in the MDG 3 that seeks to promote gender equality.

He said things are expected to get worse if the government will not implement measures to mitigate the impact of the global economic recession.

“Unfortunately, the global recession is negatively affecting [Philippines’ performance in fulfilling] the MDGs,” he said.

Lame  social program

Meyer said the Philippine government should strengthen its social policy protection programs to counter the adverse impact of the global recession on the Philippines’ poorest sector.

The UN official viewed the government’s social programs as too independent, privately driven and only caters to selected population.

The government is implementing a conditional cash transfer program, a development and poverty-reduction strategy that provides cash assistance to extremely poor households to allow the family members to meet certain human development goals such as health, nutrition and education provided that they comply with certain conditions.

“There is more needs for social security protection at the macro level,” he said.

Rising HIV cases

The UN official said the government appears likely to fall short of achieving the MDG of halting and reversing the spread of HIV by 2015.

Manila was not doing well “because instead of reversing and halting it, we see increasing cases,” Meyer said.

Citing official government records, Meyer said that about 89 percent of reported HIV transmissions were due to unprotected sex. “All the main ingredients for an epidemic are present in the country,” he told a conference on HIV.

Official government records show that there were 85 new HIV cases for the month of May, which is a 143-percent increase on the number of cases posted in the same period last year. From January to May, there were 322 infections with one leading to full blown AIDS and one death, the National Epidemiology Center said.

Condom use dismal

“The whole HIV/AIDS epidemic situation in the Philippines is on the rise and affecting more general population,” Meyer said.

Most of those who contracted HIV were males in their 20s who had same sex relationships and mostly from highly urbanized areas around Manila.

Condom use among the most at-risk, including homosexual men, female sex workers and their male clients, remained below 90 percent, Meyer said.

HIV is a lentivirus that can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) that causes the human’s immune system begins to fail and experience leading to life-threatening infections.

Voluntary testing

Meyer said government agencies, led by the Department of Health, should push for voluntary HIV/AIDS tests as part of the measures to determine the extent of the problem and consequently move to stop the disease from spreading, especially to high risk groups that include female sex workers and their male clients, injecting drug-users, overseas Filipino workers, out-of-school youth and even street children.

“It is important to promote voluntary testing especially among vulnerable and high risk group because when more people get tested, we’ll have a better knowledge on the real situation in the Philippines,” Meyer said in an interview during 

The UNDP chief, however, stressed that such numbers on HIV/AIDS infection is just the tip of the iceberg because there are no enough information in rural areas.

“The social stigma on the epidemic inherent in the Philippine culture also hinders the fight to combat the spread of the disease,” he said.

“We tend to rest on our laurels, but as you see, these data is sufficient enough to cause concern and should pay regained attention to HIV/AIDS cases,” Meyer said in closing.

With HIV and AIDS cases rising among homosexuals, the government, UNDP, and Health Action Information Network (HAIN) held the 1st National conference on Men who Sex with Men (MSM) / Transgender (TG) and HIV.

Climate change

Meyer also expressed concern over the Philippines’ lack of effective policy programs to help avert the negative impact of climate change.

“ MDG 7 [performance] is not so good as in terms of managing [implementation] of the clean air law and how the government manages the natural resources, particularly forestry programs,” said Meyer.

The UNDP Philippines is set to come up with a comprehensive review of the Philippines’ performance in the MDGs early next year in time for the MDG progress review of UN member countries in New York UN headquarters on September next year.

“ The situation [in the Philippines] is deteriorating in terms of achieving the MDGs and the overall international climate is not conducive [to enable the nation to perform better],” he said in closing. — Llanesca T. Panti, Reporter with reports from AFP, Manila Times