8 minute read

CRHRDC WHO AEFI Special Project on its 2nd Phase

■ ELIZABETH KULLALAD

After more than a year of vaccinating its population, the Philippines has administered over 154 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Challenges remain, however, in reaching marginalized and resource-constrained areas. As the Department of Health (DOH) continues to ramp up its immunization efforts, there is a need to build the trust and confidence in the national immunization program to increase demand, and improve the COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccines uptake among the eligible population.

Advertisement

In response to this, the Cordillera Regional Health Research and Development Consortium (CRHRDC) earlier undertook a six-month partnership with the World Health Organization Country Office Philippines (WHO CO PHL) for a technical assistance program in strengthening the monitoring of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccinations. This project efficiently and effectively carried out its objectives towards supporting and capacitating adverse event following immunization (AEFI) surveillance and response across five regional hubs – North Luzon, South Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and NCR. It also produced conclusions and recommendations towards the realization of a comprehensive and systemic surveillance and response for AEFI at the subnational level.

Over a six-month period, the program was able to document essential observations on the strengths and weaknesses of the country’s AEFI surveillance system. The continuous reinforcement of Regional Epidemiological

Surveillance Units (RESUs) in various forms is imperative towards optimizing AEFI surveillance and investigation as we move towards a post-pandemic context.

The CRHRDC aims to be collaborative and participatory in its approach for this project. It encourages the involvement of partners and stakeholders of the program to ensure that the results, recommendations and conclusions from the implementation will emerge from thorough discussion and analysis of various perspectives.

There remains a lot to accomplish, and many potential lessons to harvest as we look towards a “post-pandemic” context. There is also a need to ensure the end-to-end process of Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) surveillance and monitoring at the community level to different Disease Reporting Units (DRUs) as the DOH through its Epidemiology Bureau (EB) along with other agencies and WHO support make strides to extend the vaccination efforts at the community-level. Through this AEFI surveillance and response are promptly implemented and monitored.

To achieve this, Regional Epidemiology Surveillance Units (RESU)’s capacities in conducting clinical investigation and presenting case summaries must be strengthened and supported. Evidence-based clinical case investigations through close coordination and technical input to the medical officers and program officers must be ensured at the regional level.

In 1990, Mr. Johnny L. Marcos and his family started to farm a 3,500 square meter (m2) farmland in Palegao, Balili, Mankayan, Benguet with romaine and green ice lettuce as their main produce. The initial market is at the La Trinidad Trading Post and Baguio City Hangar market until they were eventually able to penetrate the Live Green Marketing Corporation in Quezon City on December 2013 until today.

Traditionally, the farm watering system is done with the aid of sprinklers. With this practice, the amount of water cannot be precisely regulated resulting to inefficient use of water that is already starting to become scarce. The farm consumed about 600,000 liters of water every cropping covering the farmland area coupled with about 1,228 liters of fuel to pump water from the source, costing them about PhP 81,000.00. Further, this method of uncontrolled and excessive water application is not efficient since it caused soil, fertilizer, applied pesticides, and fungicides runoff. It also increases humidity within the greenhouse, subjecting plants to susceptibility to fungi and bacterial growth not to mention the fact that fertilizer application is time-consuming and laborious as it is done manually.

The disadvantages brought by the manual watering system and the strong demand for the products led the owner to upgrade its manual watering system to Drip Irrigation System in 2015 through DOST’s Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program (SETUP). The assistance enabled the farm to improve its productivity and product quality through precise irrigation and fertilizer application system.

“Before, I wasn’t able to finish irrigating my farm within one week. I observed that it [Drip Irrigation System] is six times more effective compared to the traditional way of irrigating my farm,” Mr. Marcos explained.

“ “ Before, I wasn’t able to finish irrigating my farm within one week. I observed that it [Drip Irrigation System] is six times more effective compared to the traditional way of irrigating my farm.

Mr. JOHNNY L. MARCOS

JLM Farm was the first farm in the community who availed of DOST’s SETUP assistance for the improvement of his farm production systems. It became an initiator and model in the community where other farmers were also encouraged to avail and implement such technology in their farms resulting to five (5) more farms who consequently availed of DOST’s assistance

As Mr. Marcos acknowledges the importance of science, technology and innovation, he applied for Phase 2 of SETUP in 2018 to continually improve their production efficiency. With this, they were able to upgrade the Drip Irrigation System with an automated controller. The system can be set based on a time schedule and will automatically operate and stop at the desired time/duration of irrigation. This automation also resulted to more accurate and efficient distribution of water for specific areas within the specified time, hence, conserving water and labor.

In a bid to further improve its production efficiency, the DOST-CAR thru PSTO-Benguet provided the farm with technology trainings and consultancy.

The JLM Farm had also implemented various innovations to answer current issues on the farm. Aside from the adoption of greenhouse and automated drip irrigation technologies, JLM Farm established a rainwater impounding system to augment water supply for irrigation, among others. Due to the indirect effect of the COVID 19 pandemic and the change in the market demand of the customers, the farm expanded its production and practices to multiple cropping and crop rotation aside from crop programming. With the said practice, integrated pest management was also realized since planting of herbs and other species within the farm helps in pest control. Likewise, the farm was able to learn, innovate and integrate pest and disease control and management aside from minimizing or even eliminating the excessive use of chemical fertilizer, insecticides and fungicides.

Indeed, Mr. Marcos is reaping a thousand-fold what they have sown for their business. To date, JLM farms employs 32 workers, as compared to 11 workers they had before DOST’s intervention. It penetrated five (5) market outlets for his vegetable produce. Through the interventions, the farm was able to increase its annual production volume by 1,325% and its annual gross sales by 1,453%. It was able to reduce water and fuel consumption by at least 20 times or 1900% and reduce physical damage to plants caused by sprinkling to drip irrigation by 93%.

Recently, the farm was conferred as the national winner for 2022 SETUP PRAISE Award as part of the National Science and Technology Week (NSTW) celebration in November 2022. The recognition is awarded to an outstanding MSME who has excelled in managing and sustaining their business in terms of Productivity, Resilience, Agility, Innovativeness, Sustainability and Excellence (PRAISE). The firm was likewise conferred the “Sustainability” Award during the awarding ceremony.

Mr. Marcos could not have been more satisfied with the assistance and recognition he got from DOST. “Napakalaking inspirasyon at mas nais ko pang tangkilikin ang paggamit ng teknolohiya upang patuloy na gumanda ang performance ng aking negosyo,” he said.

To give back to the community, the JLM Farm continues to conduct various Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities such as donations during calamities nationwide, support to local churches, and other voluntary works. The JLM Farms exercises good leadership roles to workers as it abides to regulations on the provision of right wages, benefits, and free-lodging to workers. Its advocacies also include teaching workers with good farming practices and support to the spiritual needs of workers through weekly gathering and teaching of ethics/values to workers.

What started out in a 3,500 m2 farmland with a manual watering system where only romaine and green ice lettuce were planted, has now expanded into 40,000 m2 farmland with assorted organic leafy vegetables, root crops, and herbs through faith, dedication and innovation.

Cordillera disaster responders, LGUs level up skills on risk assessment thru CLEARS project

Tabuk City, Kalinga—The Department of Science and Technology-Cordillera Administrative Region (DOSTCAR) and Kalinga State University (KSU) conducted the Regional Training-Workshop on Rain-Induced Landslide Susceptibility Assessment using the Enhanced Rain-Induced Landslide Susceptibility Guidebook for Communities and Non-Experts, and the CLEARS Mobile and Web Applications on February 22-23, 2023.

In her message, DOST-CAR Regional Director Dr. Nancy A. Bantog mentioned that risk assessment is one of the crucial aspects in understanding and communicating disaster risk. “Understanding disaster risk is one of the foundations of disaster prevention and mitigation. We could not properly address the other priority areas without a clear understanding of what we are dealing with,” she explained.

Hence, this training was organized in partnership with the Cordillera Industry Energy and Emerging Technology R&D Consortium (CIEERDEC) and Provincial Local Government Unit (PLGU) Kalinga through their Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) for the PDRRMOs in CAR, Provincial and Municipal Engineering of Kalinga, Office of Civil Defense (OCD), Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), provincial engineering offices, DOST-CAR provincial offices and KSU.

KSU President Dr. Eduardo T. Bagtang and PLGU Kalinga Provincial Administrator Mr. Teddy Gullay also graced the opening program of the activity.

On the 2nd day, participants experienced actual data gathering at Sitio Ileb, Nambaran, Tabuk City, Kalinga along the slide-prone area of the national highway. Gathered data will be reported to the CLEARS Mobile Application developed by KSU then uploaded to the CLEARS Web Application of DOST-CAR.

The training is a component of the CLEARS Project (Community-Level Evaluation and Assessment of Raininduced Landslide Susceptibility), a local R&D project implemented by the DOST-CAR and KSU in 2022 with

■ HANSI DINUMLA & MARYJOY FERRER

support from the Regional Research, Development and Innovation Committee (RRDIC) and CIEERDEC, both led by the DOST-CAR.

The project aims to: 1) Recalibrate the Non-expert tool for Site-specific Evaluation of Rain-induced Landslide Susceptibility, 2) Develop the CLEARS Mobile Application based on the Non-Expert Tool, and 3) Develop the CLEARS Web Application as a module of the existing Cordillera DRRMIS.

These tools and methodologies will strengthen the capacity of LGUs in terms of risk assessment at the local level, which shall support disaster prevention and mitigation. More user trainings and deployment activities is expected to be conducted this year thru the DOST-CAR’s DRRM Unit and the KSU team.

■ ROSTON JOHN BONILLA

Scholar-aspirants undergo review sessions before the DOST Scholarship Exams

In an effort to prepare students for the upcoming 2023 DOST-SEI Undergraduate Scholarship Examination on March 18-19, 2023, a review was conducted by the Department of Science and Technology-Cordillera Administrative Region (DOST-CAR) last March 4 and 11, 2023. This aimed to help students refine their knowledge of various scientific concepts and increase their chances of securing the DOST scholarship.

A team of experienced S&T educators from the Philippine Science High School-Cordillera Administrative Region (PSHS-CAR) led the two-day review. On the first day, Special Science Teachers, Ms. Bethany V. Magno and Mr. Jimvileo P. Quesada covered key topics in English and Mathematics, respectively while Ms. Mayla Fangayen and Ms. Roxanne Joy L. Doyayag highlighted common pointers in Science and Mechanical-technical reasoning on the 2nd day. They also provided strategies and valuable insights in the examination process.

According to one of the mentors, Ms. Fangayen—a DOST scholar-graduate, the review was essential to ensure that students are adequately prepared for the examination. She was grateful for the opportunity to impart knowledge and is optimistic for the reviewees. “I am very happy that there is an opportunity like this for the youth nowadays, and hope that many, if not all of the examinees, will pass and be granted the scholarship they deserve,” she said.

The two-day review was well-attended, with over 957 student hopefuls nationwide mostly from the STEM strand participating. The sessions were conducted through a hybrid setup where virtual participants attended via online platforms while Provincial S&T Offices in the CAR hosted students without internet access.

Many of the students expressed their appreciation for the chance to improve their aptitude and skills. “Not only did I learn and familiarize myself with key concepts but I was able to know lots of tips to be a better examinee,” said Ms.

Jessilou L. Amoggao. “The teachers were very smart and I admire how hard concepts were taught in simpler ways that would help us answer in a short time,” she added.

The DOST-SEI scholarship examination is a highly soughtafter opportunity for high-academically achieving students who want to pursue further S&T education in the country. By providing review sessions such as these, DOST-CAR aspires to level the playing field and give all students an equal opportunity to excel.

This article is from: