HEALTH experts and advocates raised the alarm on Tuesday about the proliferation of false information online that cause panic and confusion to the public insofar as their well-being is concerned.
To address this, they called for good communication and advocacy, as well as transparency and good governance in health care.
Citing data from Google, broadcaster and parenting champion Niña Corpuz-Rodriguez revealed that fake news in social media, 25 percent of which tackles about health, is so rampant nowadays.
“It’s really a cause of concern because it threatens lives and it costs lives,” she said during the Samahang Plaridel’s Kapihan sa Manila Hotel.
While the majority of Filipinos are now worried about the spread of 2019-novel coronavirus (nCoV), she observed that they tend to forget the country has faced many other infectious diseases even before the emergence of the fatal and even before the outbreak of the Chinese flu.
Rodriguez cited, for instance, pneumonia as the No. 1 killer among the young populace, claiming daily the lives of 39 children below five years old, World Health Organization (WHO) data show.
Medicines Transparency Alliance Council (MeTA) Chairman Roberto “Obet” Pagdanganan, on the other hand, noted that 71 people die from tuberculosis everyday in the Philippines, making the country ranked as first and third in terms of the number of deaths in Asia and worldwide, respectively.
Meanwhile, Philippine Foundation for Vaccination (PFV) Executive Director Dr. Lulu Bravo pointed out that polio and measles are the recurring health maladies nationwide.
The country was declared polio-free 20 years ago. From zero casualty in 2005, there were around 500 children who died from measles recorded in 2019.
The prevalence, or resurgence, of these infectious illnesses could be attributed to the so-called vaccine complacency in the country, Bravo said.
Based on their 2015 survey that showed 93 percent vaccine confidence level among Filipinos, it declined to 32 percent in 2018. “We cannot discount that it was really due to Dengvaxia,” Bravo said of the issue on the controversial vaccine against dengue that somehow led to reluctance to immunization the past recent years.
“The WHO actually identified vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health. Right now, we find the Philippines since last year, or two years ago after the Dengvaxia controversy, has been faced with infectious disease crisis,” added Rodriguez.
To encourage the public to turn to vaccination, the PFV officer emphasized the need for “good communication and advocacy,” wherein whatever information that is being relayed must be “based on scientific evidence that are relevant to the Philippine setting.”
“We really need to make sure that our government officials and health officials are also given the trust,” Bravo explained. “We always want good information; not those that will bring panic or fear mongering.”
Seeing that the national approach to such health issues is “reactive or curative” rather than “proactive or preventive,” Pagdanganan pointed out the need for openness to handle them well.
The former Bulacan governor underscored that this could be applied in the government’s procurement system since the cost of health care in the country continues to increase.
In fact, he said, two years ago the total health-care expenses here was recorded at P799.1 billion, 54 percent or about P413 billion of which still came out of the patients’ pockets.
“That’s why transparency and good governance are very important because they will result to quality health-care service and bring down the cost of medicines, including the vaccines,” he said in mixed Filipino and English.