by Jan Marcel Ragaza and Alliage Morales
VERA Files
One of the most common drugs sold over the counter is the headache and fever tablet paracetamol, which costs P2.74 in commercial outlets. At the government-run Botika ng Barangay (BnB), paracetamol costs just a fifth of that at only 50 centavos.
Other drugs are as affordable to impoverished Filipinos at the BnB—the anti-diarrhea loperamide for P1.05 against P4.10 in private drugstores, and the anti-diabetes glibenclamide at 78 centavos against P8.90.
But even though medicines are cheaper at BnB outlets, these community drugstores have failed to gain a foothold in the drug market. The botikas number 12,000 against the 700 or so Mercury Drug outlets, but their market share is only 5 percent as against Mercury’s 60 percent. Unable to make a dent, health experts doubt whether the BnB program can pull down drug prices to half of 2001 levels, as it aims to by next year.
To read the complete report, please click here (VERA Files)
We are outraged when slurred as a nation of servants but feckless when government presumes the nation is populated with frail and sickly individuals. This mindset of an unhealthy populace is engendered by politicians who indulge the superstitions of people, pandering to trivial unscientific beliefs. Forgotten by the older generation and unlearned by the new ones are the health adages: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; an apple a day keeps the doctor away. To be fair, our educational system did not bother to translate the sayings into textbooks after finding it difficult to obtain the equivalent of ounces upon adoption of the metric system, and apples are foreign items.
The investigative reporting of the budding journalist authors perhaps cannot be faulted, but I take issue with the topic, the curative aspect of disease and completely ignores the preventive aspects of disease. I withheld comment in part I hoping the sequel will contain some hint on disease prevention in the healthcare article, to no avail.
Contrary to popular belief, pill-popping is not the way to promote health. Rather, maintaining good health, which is the normal state of most of us and is no secret, is fundamentally food. Choosing the super foods and avoiding harmful foods, exercising diligently and keeping a healthy lifestyle (avoiding tobacco and addictive substances such as alcohol and drugs) can prevent 80% of chronic diseases diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, CVD, even birth defects if maternal Vitamin D is sustained (not by ingesting pills, just plain sunlight). The infectious diseases can be prevented by simply practicing personal hygiene, mainly washing hands. All we need is a little help from government, by demanding that it do its job of maintaining good sanitation, controlling insect vectors of disease and protecting our sources of water supply from pollution.