Medical care for the poor

The Times’ front-page story “Fewer Filipinos can afford medical care, says ADB study” on Tuesday, September 8, gave concrete figures to something obvious to most thinking Filipinos.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) study says that in the 10 years covering 1998 to 2007 fewer and fewer Filipinos sought treatment from private and government hospitals because medicines and health-care services had been getting costlier.

The study finds that utilization of healthcare in the Philippines declined at an annual rate of 4.7 percent from 1998 to 2007, or at a rate faster than the population growth of 2.3 percent.

The number of Filipinos who went to government hospitals for treatment went down to 3.4 percent in 2007 from 3.70 in 1998; private hospitals, 2.25 percent from 3.06 percent; private clinics, 2.55 percent from 5.13 percent; rural health units, 2.36 percent from 4.79 percent; and barangay (village) health stations, 1.82 percent from 2.45 percent.

The ADB study says the utilization of health services among the poor might have gone down more than among the rich because of “lack of ability to pay for health services.”

We hope that now with the Cheaper Medicines Law more of the poor would go to hospitals and clinics when they get sick.

But the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) see that only a few vital drugs and medicines have become cheaper since the maximum retail prices of less than 20 medicines were set on August 15.

The BFAD is giving non-compliant drugstores, whose stock they paid for under the old prices, until September 15 to comply.

The government should not stop taking steps to make medicines cost less in our country.  Health is wealth.  No amount of effort by our economic planners to raise the gross domestic product will succeed in making our nation prosperous if millions of citizens who are poor are sick and not being given proper healthcare. –Manila Times