Saturday, October 11, 2008 Sumog-oy: Gensan crafts own health code By Ben O. Sumog-oy Issues and Views
(Second Part)
IN OTHER countries, the perfect complementation of these two effectual elements of a health and welfare program is a happy combine that stirs the local economy and, eventually, pedals the same along ascending economic roadway.
This development theory, hand-in-hand with the development of participatory governance and humanist economic system, is now gaining popularity in various nation-states in the world.
However, this economic development strategy is yet to become a significant influence in a largely capitalistic society like ours, which is struggling, not to transform, but merely, sincerely perhaps, to humanize itself. Our society is yet to attain such ideological renaissance to enable its people to appreciate the mystics and the magical power of this welfare-based development theory.
Our only consolation is that, while our local government is yet to reach the stage of ideological reawakening, the present trend involving health and welfare services is already leading us towards that direction.
The city is already on the road to political maturation, and this maturity is already beginning to reflect on the system of its governance and on the policies and programs it invents in constant.
Really, the writing of the health code is indicative of our city's maturing governance under City Mayor Pedro Acharon.
Following practical contexts, the writing of the code was based generally on three unfolding realities, affecting the city's health situation: the need for a uniform pro-active health policies as the city continuously metamorphose from a once frontier city into a modernizing agro-industrial center; increasing demands for various health services brought about by the city's ever ascending sociological spirals, resulting in massive growth and expansion of blighted urban communities; and the necessity of setting up policies that could respond to increasing demands for health services by indigent patients from adjoining local government units (LGUs) which are substantially depleting the city's financial resources.
City Administrator Dospueblos, also the chair-alternate of the LHB and, at the same time, the chairman of TWG, said that the writing of the code has certain social mobilization and pedagogical components.
The process should be done in a manner that could sway mainstream thinking and ensure its educational value for the public. Thus, the process is pedagogy, in itself.
It is for this reason that the writing of the city's health code caries the following objectives: 1.) Deepen the understanding of different stakeholders, especially functionaries within mandated government agencies, of their mandated tasks and functions through the dynamic interactions and sharing of experiences and ideas between and among them, but with the meaningful participation of different sectors and communities; and 2.) Raise public awareness on the role of the people in the improvement of the city's public health conditions through the intensification of public discourses on public health issues and concerns.
The writing of the city health code is not technocratic; it is participatory. Public discourses are considered very important in giving of substance to the contents of the code.
Thus, this section paves the way for these discourses. People, therefore, are encouraged to submit thoughts/ideas through our email address and could post the same on our blog site, which are located at the tail end of this column.
To begin with, the main logic for the writing of the health code is elemental in the nature of the state and in the whole philosophy of its existence. Guaranteeing public health is one of its primordial roles. In fact, it is a role that the state cannot dispense with, lest it betrays the whole philosophy of its existence.
In fact, following the mandate of the 1987 constitution, guaranteeing public health has ceased to become a ministrant state function. It is now considered a constituent function of government, meaning that discharge of public health services is now legally demandable by mandamus, a court action directing concerned public officers to perform their mandated governmental duties.
The reason for this is simple. The maintenance and improvement of public health conditions are considered primus inter pares, first among equals, in the hierarchy of public concerns. They are so important a social function that the state, in the pursuit of such role, is even constitutionally authorized to use its various coercive instruments to impose restraint upon the people's free exercise of civil liberties (e.g. right of travel and abode).
(For comments: Email Address: bsumogoy@yahoo.com; Blog site: bensumogoy@wordpress.com).
