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Monday, July 24, 2006
Severino: Undersides, underinvestments, unwilling
By Gil Alfredo Severino
Think Economics
THIS is not nice to hear but reality is reality and there is nothing wrong with profits arising from legitimate business and for social development sustainability.
Profiteering, exploitation, promotional deceit, coercion or envelopes in journalism is divinely disdainful.
Properly identified and mobilized, mental problems are quite a large market for the pharmaceutical industry. Mental health problems and illnesses are long term and recurring at times.
Thus the market for its medication is assured. Government's truncated budgetary process however dampens the market bull.
Philippine health budget is 2.9% of GNP; World Health Organization recommendation is 5% of GNP. Devolved this budget to the provincial level, it will result to measly sum of Php 23,000.00 operation budget (PHO) for 2006, inflation not factored.
We cannot blame health centers then to prioritize emergency cases over optional cases, i.e., mental health, EENT, cataract and to a certain extent, cancer.
This underinvestment evidently leaves mental health to mend for itself. Being imported research medicines for the mentally ill and therefore super expensive, pharmaceutical medicines are segmented to the upper strata of society while the poor are left to the streets stigmatized.
Pharmaceutical companies therefore are losing the greater mass of the market. Department of Health receives benefits and partners with private pharmaceutical companies for malaria, polio, TB, cancer, herbal medicines but none so far for mental health. The uniqueness of mental cases could have been the main reason.
Mental illness is not symptomatic like infection and requires the whole family to adjust as the family may be the cause.
Besides, the cost of medicine and the stigma attached to it reduced the suffering patient to live in his "sariling mundo" (distorted conscience chambers). The health department and centers should know better and a redirection can help a lot in terms of legislated budgetary allocation, and in the national level, private business participation.
Dr. Johnny Flavier did it very well for family planning. How? Dr. Flavier used his powers to direct the private business for family planning, turned the underinvestment to productive investment for contraceptive business, acted on TV (with Vilma Santos and Dolphy) and movies, in fact. He partnered with Gringo Honasan, by the way, with Vilma Santos. Result, contraceptives are now multi-million business in the Philippines.
Why? This is because family planning was his health priority during his stint at the DOH. It can be done for mental health. Some 6,000 or more wandering around the island is life threatening but a market at the same time.
Let me be clear, marketing management is a national concern. The Bacolod City Mental Health Care Center is but a recipient of a devolved budget. The Philippine Mental Health Association, Negros Chapter, is a teaching advocate having no substantial resources to extensively accommodate the clinically problematic.
With the low level of awareness, national and local budgetary constraints, stigma, educational system that does not even care to upgrade guidance and counseling program, tri-media that does not feature scientific milestones, justice system that is punitive rather than restorative, the poor Filipino's mind must have cohabitated with spiders' cobwebs.
Worst, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's Ten Point Agenda does not contain even the smallest iota of health programs. What productivity are we talking if the vast majority of human resources are coughing?
Here in the province, I am not acquainted with that Dr. Iturriaga of Silay. He embodies a simple HRD case. I extend my empathy to him. How we prioritize health and in particular mental health is extremely serious and what matters.
(July 24, 2006 issue)
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