MANILA, Philippines - Two legislators have urged the government to declare a state of national health emergency and ensure that poor people will have access to affordable medicine, even as the Department of Health (DOH) relaxed its guidelines despite a spike in the number of Influenza A(H1N1) cases in the Philippines.
The declaration would allow the government to re-align funds for the containment of the disease, impose price control over essential medicines, and require compulsory licensing of patented drugs through the Cheaper and Quality Medicines Act of 2008, according to Iloilo Representatives Ferjinel Biron and Janette Garin, who are both physicians.
"Nothing is preventing the DOH from declaring an epidemic. The phenomenon is global, it was declared a pandemic. It is timely for the DOH to declare a state of national health crisis," said Biron, principal author of the House version of R.A. 9502.
As of June 29, the DOH had reported 1,709 cases from various parts of the country. The Philippines has the 10th highest number of patients in the list of 101 countries that have reported A(H1N1) cases, based on the June 29 report of the World Health Organization.
Given its rapid spread, one-fourth of the country’s population of 90 million could be hit with the infection, according to recent estimates made by Dr. Lyndon Lee Suy, head of the DOH’s Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Disease Program.
The virus claimed its first fatality in the country and in Asia last June 19 with the death of a 49-year-old female employee of the House of Representatives who had been suffering from a heart ailment. Thailand, another Southeast Asian country, reported three A(H1N1)-related deaths in the past week of people who had been stricken with pneumonia.
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