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By Nora O. Gamolo Senior
Deskperson
Workers, science students and
advocates from the heath sector, led by KilosBayan Para Sa Kalusugan
(KBK) and the Alliance of Health of Workers (AHW), are asking for a
higher health budget for 2008, expressing alarm about its “scant
allocation” for the year.
KBK is an alliance of
health-oriented social advocates, while AHW is a federation of
health workers’ groups.
According to Dr. Eleanor Jara,
KBK convenor, “the P15.7-billion health budget for 2008 will never
be enough to meet the needs of 87 million Filipinos.”
AHW’s Emma Manuel decried the
failure of the government to adequately provide wages and benefits
for health workers, saying it drives health workers to look for
“better working condition and pay” abroad. This reflects the low
budget given to health concerns, she said.
KBK’s recent survey of major
hospital public hospitals in Metro Manila revealed that
hospitalization costs are beyond patients’ capacity to pay, while
exorbitant hospital expenses drive poor patients to beg. Forty-four
percent of the respondents resorted to borrowing or selling their
properties to pay their hospitalization expenses, while 32 percent
sought assistance from Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office,
charitable institutions, and politicians.
They decried government’s
priority for expensive projects like the National Broadband Network.
“While public hospitals are
crippled due to sore lack of resources, we wonder how the government
can still manage to waste billions of taxpayers’ money on such an
unscrupulous deal,” Manuel ended.
Health workers support the call
of Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo for higher health budget. Other
lawmakers, like Representatives Joel Villanueva and Carlos Padilla,
also support his call.
Ocampo said the health budget has
declined about 40 percent in the past 11 years and is far below the
World Health Organization’s prescription of public health spending
taking five percent of the gross national product (GNP). He cited
Secretary Francisco Duque saying the country’s health concerns
need some P60 billion annually.
In a study conducted by the Ibon
Databank, a social research group, health continues to take a low
priority in the national budget.
Although the overall government
health budget in the proposed 2008 national budget grew 24 percent
to P22.9 billion from P18.4 billion in 2007, government hospitals
that provide direct service to poor Filipinos have falling
allocations. For example, the budget of 55 government hospitals and
medical centers nationwide was slashed by 12 percent to P3.7 billion
from P4.2 billion this year.
Meanwhile, allocations for the
operation of a dozen special hospitals, medical centers and
institutes for disease prevention and control were reduced by P121
million to P2.6 billion. These hospitals include those frequented by
the poor, such as the Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital, San Lazaro
Hospital and Tondo Medical Center.
Budgetary support for the major
specialty hospitals, were cut even more drastically by 22 percent to
just P793.6 million.
--With Rommel C. Lontayao
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