Dignity

There are a lot of things and services that many of our unfortunate fellow Filipinos do not have access to - from quality education to proper health care.

- IRIS GONZALES

As is usually the case, they are able to avail themselves of these social services but in poor quality - from expired vaccines in barangay health centers to classrooms that leak when the rains come. If the problem isn't expired vaccines, there are many others - a lack of qualified barangay health workers, ill-equipped centers and government hospitals.

It's also not uncommon to see classes being held in ankle-deep floods in some parts of our country - both teachers and young boys and girls, carrying on with the lessons despite the flooding. When there is no rain, the problems include crowded classrooms, lack of facilities and supplies, a shortage of qualified teachers and many more. Many of these problems are in the EDCOM II report.

All these inadequacies strip Filipinos of the dignity they deserve. Each of us deserves to live a dignified life.

Dignity is the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect. This means that as citizens, we must be accorded the social services which the Constitution mandates us to have with honor and respect. This includes the right to dignified education and health care.

One of my first assignments as a rookie journalist was to cover a cancer-stricken man who was dying in a hospital room in a government hospital in Quezon City. The room had seen better days. I remember noticing the broken windows, the dilapidated bed and the miserable charity ward. At the center of it all was the 69-year-old patient who was wasting away, waiting for death to come.