Gov’t focusing on poverty, education, maternal health to meet MDG goals

The Aquino administration is focused on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, and improving maternal health, in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, the National Economic and Development Authority said.

Director Erlinda Capones of the NEDA Social Development Staff, said that the government is prioritizing those three goals since the Philippines still has a low probability of achieving the targets on education and maternal health while there is still a lot to be done when it comes to reducing poverty.

“Priority is currently given on efforts to accelerate the achievement of Goals 1: Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; Goal 2: Achieving universal primary education and Goal 5: Improving maternal health,” Capones said in an e-mail.

“In summary, the Philippines is likely to meet the targets on food poverty; child mortality; malaria and access to safe drinking water and sanitary toilet facilities,” she said.

“On the other hand, we need to double or triple our efforts to meet the targets on income poverty; nutrition; participation, cohort survival and completion rates in elementary education; maternal mortality and access to reproductive health services,” the NEDA official said.

Capones added that interventions on combating HIV and AIDS should be intensified even though the estimated number of HIV and AIDS cases is still below one percent of the population.

She said that the number of reported HIV and AIDS cases is “increasing at an alarming rate.”

MDG WATCH

The Philippines is one of the 189 countries which made a commitment to fight poverty, hunger, diseases, illiteracy, environmental decay, and discrimination against women through a set of time-bound and measurable goals called the Millennium Development Goals.

Member states of the United Nations came together at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 to affirm their commitments to reduce poverty and to make the right to development a reality for all.

To attain the MDGs, a set of indicators defined by the UN is used, to assess the progress of each country over the period of 1990 to 2015.

There are 60 MDG indicators, which are identified under eight main goals.

These are: (1) Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger; (2) Achieve Universal Primary Education; (3) Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women; (4) Reduce Child Mortality; (5) Improve Maternal Health; (6) Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Other Diseases; (7) Ensure Environmental Sustainability; and (8) Develop A Global Partnership For Development.

Capones said that the Philippine government was able to prepare four national reports on the country’s progress of meeting the MDGs, released in 2003, 2005, 2007, and the latest in September 2010.

“The next country report, which will contain information on the progress made from 1990, the remaining challenges, the priorities needed and, probably, the post 2015 plans, will be formulated in 2013, in time for the United Nation General Assembly review in September 2013. There will also be a final report in 2016,” Capones said.

Last June, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) revisited the progress of the Philippines in achieving the goals through its “MDG Watch.”

THIRD GOAL

The NSCB said that since the Fourth Progress Report on the MDGs published by NEDA in September 2010, only the third goal which aims to promote gender equality and empowering women declined to medium probability from achieving the target from high probability, while the rest of the MDGs remained the same.

According to the NSCB, the Philippines still has a low probability in achieving the targets of MDG 2 on achieving universal primary education and MDG 5 on improving maternal health.

The country has a medium probability of achieving two other targets: MDG 1 on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and MDG 3 on promoting gender equality and empowering women.

Finally, the country has a high probability of meeting four goals by 2015.

These are MDG 4 on reducing child mortality, MDG 6 on combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, MDG 7 on ensuring environmental sustainability, and MDG 8 on developing a global partnership for development.

The statistical agency said that in terms of indicators, there are 14 indicators with high probabilities of achieving the target, while four and 13 indicators were found to be of medium and low probabilities, respectively.

“The rest of the indicators for which there are no clear numerical targets (i.e, the target is to “increase” or “decrease”) were not classified based on the probability of achieving the targets,” the NSCB said.

STEPPING UP EFFORTS

The NEDA Social Development Committee met and discussed the possible ways of achieving the targets on education and maternal health shortly after the MDG Watch was released.

NEDA said that it will boost its efforts to achieve the said targets since there is still a low probability of achieving them with the deadline only less than three years away.

“There is robust evidence that human capital is a strong determinant of poverty, and this is why the government is looking into these issues,” NEDA director general Arsenio Balisacan earlier said.

Balisacan said that among the strategies discussed were the immediate implementation of policy interventions on improving access to and quality of basic education, government’s support for maternal and reproductive health, and intensified rollout of the conditional cash transfer program.

“We only have three years to go, and I would like the SDC to concentrate on untangling the issues that hamper our efforts in education and health,” Balisacan said.

The NEDA Chief has instructed the National Statistics Office and the NSCB, both attached agencies of NEDA, to execute timely releases of social statistics.

Meanwhile, in an earlier interview with UP economist Benjamin Diokno, he said that the decline in the probability of achieving the goal in gender equality should not be a cause of concern.

The former Budget Secretary cited the two female Presidents that the Philippines had, and added that there are women prominent in the bureaucracy and in business.

“In the overall scheme of things, the goal of gender equality and women empowerment is less important than the MDGs on poverty alleviation, universal education, and maternal health care,” he said.

“We are not doing well in both universal education and maternal health care because the government has not given both a lot of attention and funding. Other countries in the ASEAN-5 region have done much better,” Diokno said.

MAJOR GOV’T PROGRAMS

To increase support for the achievement of the MDGs, Capones said that the implementation of effective programs and projects that would have a positive impact especially on the poor and marginalized groups is being intensified by the Aquino Administration.

One of these projects is the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program which was launched in 2008.

Capones said that the CCT serves as the cornerstone of the government’s strategy to fight poverty and to attain the MDGs.

“It has twin objectives of providing social assistance for immediate needs of the family and social development to break the inter-generational poverty through human capital investments,” Capones said.

As of June 2012, the program has already covered 3.01 million poor households, exceeding the 3 million cumulative target for 2012.

There’s also the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan- Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) Project, which involves the building of small-scale infrastructure and implementation of social and economic activities after communities identify and propose development projects.

“The KALAHI-CIDSS is seen to increase per capita consumption, enhance service delivery, increase participation in and enhance perception of barangay assemblies, and improved group membership and levels of trust on national government, among others,” Capones said.

The Self-Employment Assistance-Kaunlaran (SEA-K) Program meanwhile is a livelihood and capability building program that aims to enhance the socio-economic skills of poor families towards establishing and managing sustainable community-based credit organizations for entrepreneurial development.

“The program also enables the poor to have access to credit; promote entrepreneurship; increase understanding on values of honest work, pay debts, have social responsibility; and increase their income,” Capones said.

The Microfinance Program is led by the People’s Credit and Finance Corporation (PCFC) tasked to mobilize resources for microfinance services for the exclusive use of the poor, Capones said.

Capones said that the PCFC offers wholesale short, medium, and long term investment loans to accredited microfinance institutions, non-government organizations, and cooperatives that implement credit assistance programs using any proven microfinance lending methodology to finance livelihood projects of targeted poor clients.

The Community-Based Employment Program (CBEP) is geared to reduce poverty by providing temporary or immediate employment to skilled, semi-skilled and low-skilled workers in the community by using labor-based equipment supported method, Capones said.

In 2011, a total of 1.49 million jobs were generated under the CBEP through the implementation of various projects.

There is also the implementation of Universal Health Care (UHC) which is directed towards ensuring the achievement of the health system goals of better health outcomes, fair financing, and responsive health system.

“The objective of UHC is to promote equity in health through the provision of full financial protection and improvement of access to priority public health programs and quality hospital care especially for the poor,” Capones said.

To improve the quality of education in the country and to meet education-related MDGs, the government is implementing programs such as the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda, the Kindergarten to 12 Years Basic Education Program, Training for Work Scholarship Program, and Scholarship Benefits and Student Financial Assistance.

2013 BUDGET

To increase the chances of meeting some of the targets, the Department of Budget and Management has proposed a budget increase for programs that will help the country meet the health-related MDGs.

The Aquino administration has a proposed budget of P10.238 billion for said programs in 2013, 17.21 percent higher than this year’s P8.735 billion budget.

Bulk of the 2013 budget will go to the “Doctors to the Barrios Program” with P2.799 billion, higher than the P1.741 billion allocation for this year.

The program aims to provide 131 doctors, 22,500 nurses, and 4,379 midwives next year to different barrios nationwide.

The DOH’s expanded program on immunization meanwhile will cover around 2.7 million children, and will have a budget of P1.95 billion as against the P1.875 billion budget for 2012.

The government also aims to treat tuberculosis (TB) through the TB Control program which has a budget of P1.021 billion, same as this year’s allocation.

Under the said program, the government hopes to treat 46,694 individuals diagnosed with TB.

The National Pharmaceutical Policy Development, which includes the provision of drugs and medicines and medical and dental supplies to make affordable quality drugs available, has a proposed budget of P1.038 billion, higher than this year’s P1 billion allocation.

The program will cover 1,377 Local Government Units and 160 hospitals.

Meanwhile the government lowered its allocation for the elimination of common diseases, with a proposed budget of P570 million in 2013 as against the P592 million budget this year.

Data from the NSCB shows that there is a high probability that the country will be able to meet its target of putting an end to the prevalence and death associated with malaria.

The administration also aims to provide antiretroviral treatment to 6,056 HIV infected individuals, through a budget of P321 million for 2013, higher than this year’s P224 million fund.

For family health and responsible parenting programs, the Aquino administration will allot P2.539 billion next year, higher than the P2.28 billion for 2012. –ANGELA CELIS, Malaya