Tags: Health Issues
By KC Santos
PASIG CITY, METRO MANILA – Many areas in the Philippines still lack medical facilities and equipment, thus the government needs to set up more local health facilities in order to address this problem.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also said these local health facilities can help curb infant mortality as well as pregnancy-related deaths.
Angela Travis, communications chief of UNICEF Philippines said that when medical avenues are improved, “more women can seek assistance and consultations.”
A recent report said 50 percent of the population do not have access to health care, while 40 percent do not have access to essential medicine. The report added that 10 mothers die daily due to pregnancy and childbirth-related causes, and 100 municipalities do no have doctors and nurses.
One of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to improve maternal health by reducing the country’s maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by three quarters between 1990 and 2015.
Unfortunately there was a flat rate on development statistics since maternal health programs have been implemented by the UNICEF in 2000, Travis said.
Travis said the “slow progress” is what motivates the UNICEF to improve on its data research through consultations.
She added during her visit in the province of Saranggani, “mobile” health workers are often the only means by which local residents can avail of medical services.
“Some areas in Saranggani have no medical hospitals that women from the villages can reach. So mobile midwives would, in their motorcycles, go to three households each day to give these mothers medical assistance,” Travis said.
Travis said that the UNICEF is “trying to get more people oriented about the UNICEF’s advocacies.”
“In Africa, if a baby with her mother in a bus keeps on crying, other passengers would tell her to breastfeed her child. But in the Philippines, a question on the mother’s civility is raised if she breastfeeds in public,” she said.
“When we speak of infant deaths, there’s no debate. We have to act on it.”.
Additional photos courtesy of UNICEF Philippines
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