Health& Fitness Climate change is slowly having an impact on human health—expert

By Rory Visco Contributor

West Nile Virus. i n creasing allergens contribute to respiratory allergies and asthma, water quality impacts could result in cholera and other kinds of water-borne disease. Water and food supply impacts can lead to malnutrition and diarrhea, while environmental degradation can result in forced migration, civil conflict and mental health impact. Extreme heat causes heat-related illness and death, cardiovascular failure, and severe weather can lead to injuries, fatalities, and mental health impacts.

got infected resulting to death, and that serious mistake where hospitals not geared up for infection control accepted Covid-19 patients.”

By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

Malaria is a lifethreatening disease caused by plasmo -

Editor: Anne Ruth Dela Cruz

malaria-free while Oriental Mindoro, r i zal, a u rora, and Cotabato were declared malariafree in 2022.

a c cording to the Natural r es ources Defense Council (N r D C), global warming is created with the burning of “fossil” fuels such as coal, crude oil and gas. a lt hough these fuels answer the energy needs to produce light in our homes, run our cars and operate factories to produce our daily needs, it also fuels global warming by creating immense amounts of carbon dioxide emissions that a re then trapped in the planet’s atmosphere, thus creating climate change. This means the more carbon dioxide in the air, the hotter the climate gets.

i n h er presentation during the “Stop COV i D D eaths” webinar titled “Climate Change and post-Covid-19 Health Security” that was organized by the University of the Philippines and the UP Manila N i H N ational Telehealth Center together with the UP Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH), Dr. Susan Pineda Mercado, co-Chair of the National Panel of Technical Experts of the Philippine Climate Change Commission, said that fossil fuels create greenhouse gases that account for 80 percent of carbon dioxide leading to global warming and ocean acidification.

“The Philippines still has coalfired plants though they should have been phased out completely. Currently, the greatest emitter of fossil fuels in the world is China and unless the bigger countries bring down their emissions, we all suffer. The bigger countries are the ones that have to cut down on their use of fossil fuels though that’s really very contentious,” she said. r i ght now, Dr. Mercado said scientists are aiming for only a 1.5-degree Centigrade increase in temperature by 2030 but they themselves believe it’s not realistic with what’s happening today. They believe an increase of more than 1.5 degrees (some estimates peg it at four degrees) poses a scenario where only reptiles will be able to survive.

Climate Change: the impact on human health

SHE said that rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising sea levels and increasing carbon dioxide levels can result in air pollution, which increases the risk for asthma and cardiovascular disease, changes in vector ecology such as malaria, dengue, encephalitis, Hantavirus, r i ft Valley fever, ly me disease, Chikungunya, and

Slow-onset events—what to do next?

C l i M aT E change, according to Dr. Mercado, will bring about what is called “Slow Onset Events” or SOEs, events that happen so slowly that are hardly noticeable. These include increasing temperature, “desertification” where fertile land becomes a desert due to climate change and other human activities, loss of biodiversity, land and forest degradation, glacial retreat, sea level rise, ocean acidification and salination, where salt water intrudes into ground water.

Climate change is said to be the greatest threat to public health, a threat seen as an existential one due to concerns where humanity’s survival hangs in the balance. Thus, Dr. Pineda pointed out that there should be substantial investments in public health, particularly in the areas of surveillance, laboratories, vaccine production, workforce development and emergency management.

Some of the constraints at the early onset of Covid-19, she noted, was slow testing. “We had only one bio-safety level laboratory 3. Testing was slow since we were not prepared for an outbreak. There was also no local Personal Protective Equipment [PPE] production so health workers

She reiterated the need to create a good laboratory and surveillance network, which is what many countries have done already, to test and determine if there is a new virus or if there are mutations happening that could impact the country’s control measures. “Creating a good laboratory and surveillance network should be made a part of an overall plan for pandemic preparedness by putting in the necessary investments,” Dr. Mercado emphasized.

She also pointed to having a body of technical experts who are highly skilled in surveillance, a body that is somewhat similar to the US Centers for Disease Control and Protection, our own Philippine CDC. “We have to purposely be better at surveillance and start looking at how we’re going to manage all infections in the country and not just Covid-19.”

Dr. Mercado also suggested the “repurposing” of the Quezon i n stitute, which used to be the center for tuberculosis, into a National Center for Pandemic Preparedness and r e sponse, and to stockpile PPEs that can be given to health workers when they need it. Given the conditions of climate change, she said, another pandemic may hit the world again.

Many people, Dr. Mercado pointed out, don’t notice SOEs but they are slowly affecting people’s lives and they don’t seem to be acting as much as they should. “ it ’s happening so slowly that unless you step back, you don’t realize that the Earth is actually on fire or underwater in many places and you think it’s just something that happened to you today not realizing how widespread it is.” dium parasites transmitted by the anopheles mosquito or rarely through blood transfusion and sharing of contaminated needles causing acute febrile illness and symptoms in the form of fever, headache and chills.

Untreated, P. falciparum malaria may progress to severe illness and possibly, death.

The Philippines carries a high burden of malaria disease in the past but with the unrelenting efforts of the Department of Health-National Malaria Control and Elimination Program (DOH-NMCEP) cases and deaths has been reduced significantly, that the country is now inching towards elimination.

Malaria-free

ExCEPT f or Palawan, DOH officer-in-charge Maria r o sario Vergeire said that 80 out of 81 provinces in the country are now malaria-free.

“

Ang criteria nito [Malariafree provinces] is the absence of local transmission of malaria for the past five years,” Vergeire explained in a media forum on Tuesday.

Vergeire said that since 1995, Cebu, Bohol, and Catanduanes were already declared i n 2019, the DOH already targeted to reduce malaria incidence rate by 90 percent by 2022.

The DOH was able to realize the goal, through strategies which include early diagnosis and complete treatment, use of insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying of insecticide.

Symptoms i n severe form, it may include severe vomiting and diarrhea, generalized convulsion, delirium and impaired consciousness, followed by coma and possibly death.

Malaria is contracted from a bite of an infective female a no pheles mosquito that breeds in rivers and lakes. it c an also be transmitted by blood transfusion, and possibly mother to child before and or during birth.

The symptoms usually start approximately nine to 14 days after the bite of an infective mosquito.

However, in some types of malaria, the symptoms may appear one to several months after the infective mosquito bite.

The symptoms include high fever, headache, chills and shivers, nausea and vomiting.

By Roderick L. Abad Contributor

THE private sector is pushing pharmaceutical companies to apply for a Certificate of Product r e gistration (CPr ) in order to make Covid-19 vaccines available to the public.

This was the statement of Go Negosyo Founder Joey Concepcion in response to a call for the business community to forego its plan on purchasing new vaccines meant to counter the stronger variants of Omicron.

Department of Health (DOH) officer-in-charge Dr. Maria r osario Vergeire recently made an appeal for businesses to refrain from procuring them as they may lead more waste.

Tanco-led Maestro Holdings and RelianceUnited, a subsidiary of United l a boratories (Unilab), the leading pharmaceutical company in the Philippines and Southeast a s ia, has formed a partnership that would give members of pioneering health maintenance organization Phil c a re access to RelianceUnited’s full-service HealthFirst c l inic. The partnership affirms the two companies’ commitment to provide the best h ealth-care services to their clients and further cements their position as two of the most dynamic institutions in the country’s health-care industry. “It further reflects our commitment to not just provide quality and smarter health care to our members, but to also make it more accessible in terms of costs and location,” Phil c a re President and ceo Jaeger l . Tanco said.

“This is just the beginning of our wonderful journey as partners united in the mission to be a reliable health-care provider to Filipinos.”

RelianceUnited aims to provide simpler and better corporate healthcare to Filipino employees armed with its comprehensive network of healthcare facilities, highquality service, and automated processes.

Phil c a re members can now enjoy consultations and laboratory diagnostic tests in HealthFirst c l inic branches in Metro Manila and c e bu. HealthFirst c l inic is located in Mandaluyong, c u bao, c e bu, a l abang, and e a stwood, with another opening in Bonifacio Global c ty in the first quarter of 2023.

The partnership also brings comfort and convenience to another level by providing Phil c a re members an exclusive cobranded area in HealthFirst c inic branches to save them from long queues, and by allowing them to easily schedule annual medical exams, and see lab results conveniently online.

“ Through the partnership, we get to further live out our mission to deliver quality, personalized care in a cost-effective w ay to Filipinos,” RelianceUnited President d avid San Pedro said. “With our pursuit aligned, I believe Phil c a re and HealthFirst will achieve more in the near future.”

‘WE h ave 6 million less smokers today because of tobacco taxes. This is equivalent to about 60,000 deaths prevented in 2022 alone. That’s a lot of lives saved, more than i think the medical community could think of saving in our lifetime, but it’s something our legislators did just by signing a law—they saved lives.”

This was the statement of Dr. a ntonio Dans, clinical epidemiologist from the UP College of Medicine, on behalf of the Sin Tax Coalition, at the anniversary of the Sin Tax r e form l a w or r e public a c t 10351, held from January 19-20, 2023, at the Edsa Shangrila Manila.

The broad coalition of civil society reformers that worked together to legislate an unprecedented number of sin tax increases came together to celebrate the reforms’ gains.

December 2022 marked the tenth year since the signing of the landmark Sin Tax r e form l a w, which was followed by a tobacco and alcohol tax increase in the T r ai N l a w in 2017, another increase in taxes on tobacco and an introduction of taxes on e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products in 2019 through ra 11346, and an increase in taxes on alcohol, e-cigarettes, and heated tobacco products in 2020 through ra 11467.

Tobacco tax champions from the a qu ino and Duterte administrations, including former Secretaries of Health Dr. Enrique Ona and Dr. Francisco Duque iii , a nd former Secretaries of Finance Cesar Purisima and Carlos Dominguez, were recognized for their instrumental roles in the tax increases which successfully tripled the budget of the Department of Health since 2012 levels and played an integral role in the Philippines’ credit rating upgrade in 2013.

The World Health Organization commended the group for the reforms which lowered smoking prevalence rates from 30 percent in 2009, before the reform, to 19.5 percent in 2021. These statistics indicate that the reform successfully raised prices on cigarettes, prevented new smokers from initiating smoking habits, and made current smokers quit.

“The private sector will no longer buy bivalent vaccines. This is not anymore in step with the waning demand because people believe they already have natural immunity,” the entrepreneurial czar said, while citing that vaccinations will be voluntary.

“What we are saying is that the pharmaceutical companies should be encouraged to apply for CPr s s o that they can be made available to the public, the same way that vaccines for pneumonia and shingles are readily available at the pharmacies,” he added.

Concepcion assured Dr. Vergeire that even if there will not be any procurement of the updated booster soon from the private sector, he hopes that such Covid-19 vaccine can become one of the regular vaccines in the country before 2023 ends.

“What we are looking at is the situation down the road, when we will need to renew our booster shots, like we do for the flu, and this is when people should have access to the Covid-19 vaccines. We see this happening toward the end of the year, and maybe this will be a time when people will pay for their vaccines and the government doesn’t need to buy it anymore,” he said.

Avoid wastage la S T February 6, Dr. Vergeire bared that around 26 million Covid jabs remain unused, 16 million doses of which are kept in the national warehouse, while 10 million are already distributed to different local government units. Such figure is on top of the 24 million doses that have already expired. i n a n interview during the l a ging Handa Public Briefing on Monday, the Go Negosyo founder said that the target of 1 million vaccines to be made available over-the-counter is “good enough” given the “waning interest in the vaccines because people believe they have natural immunity already.”

“ i agree that there is enough supply for the government; there is no issue there. We also are aware of the wastage and i believe we should save our taxpayers’ money for other things, like helping our economy become stronger,” Concepcion said.

The country may be “in a good place right now” in so far as the easing pandemic situation is concerned, “but that doesn’t mean that a CPr is no longer needed,” he pointed out.

He agreed with Dr. Vergeire that available vaccines must be used, as “donations are coming and that will be more than enough.”

“But let’s give people a chance to protect themselves. We support the prioritization of the seniors, the health-care workers and those with comorbidities, but we should also look after those who may be outside of these priority groups but will nevertheless need protection,” Concepcion stressed.