Healthy Philippines is possible

The year is 2075. Thanks to a triumphant revolution 40 years earlier, a new government unveiled a radical health program.

- TONYO CRUZ

From the first year after the revolution, all babies got screened and immunized, and mothers taken care of. School children receive mandatory vaccination. Everyone from the age of 18 receives annual physical checkups. Barangay health workers fan out every day to check on the sick, elderly and persons with disability. The “medical tourism” program is abolished immediately.

Physical fitness, physical and health education, indigenous and international sports are promoted in all schools, workplaces and neighborhoods.

New local governments competed among themselves not in building city hospitals, but in keeping their citizens healthy. The annual checkups that begin at age 18 continue as a mandatory right of workers. Sick and vacation leaves are guaranteed and protected.

The local governments of adjacent cities or provinces instead cooperated among themselves in building local tertiary hospitals that are adequate, well-equipped, properly-funded, and fully-staffed. The national government and Congress agreed to assist the local governments in such endeavors.

Thanks to the annual physicals, preventable diseases are actually prevented. Serious diseases are detected early. Occupational health and safety is highlighted in workplaces, private and public.

To the cynics’ amazement, the new government declared that because people were the country’s most valuable asset, their health should be taken care of.