Tomorrow marks the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Cancer is the second leading cause of death for Filipinos, next to heart diseases. Among women, it ranks No. 1 as the cause of death, with breast cancer as the primary type with the highest incidence. The good news is that there are medical interventions combined with early diagnosis that can help cancer patients live long. In short, nowadays, a cancer diagnosis does not automatically come with a death certificate.
Unfortunately, the cost of obtaining treatment combined with the risks of Covid-19 transmission while visiting a hospital have become barriers to getting well, or at least in managing the disease. With so much attention and resources focused on the highly infectious virus, ailments that have been around for so long have been marginalized, public policy-wise.
Fourteen months have passed from the approval of the implementing rules and regulations of the National Integrated Cancer Control Act (NICCA) or Republic Act (RA) 11215. Sadly, very few people, including cancer patients, are aware that there is such a law. Perhaps, if more people are aware of this law, pressure can be brought to bear upon our legislators to fund it. Right now, this is a largely unfunded law without sufficient
personnel to even support its implementation.
The National Integrated Cancer Control Act, authored by then Senator JV Ejercito, is a legal tapestry of every cancer patient’s dream—from cheaper cancer medicines to a policy-setting Council that will push for better interventions to prevent cancer and to facilitate its treatment. Cancer treatments are not cheap. I should know, because my weekly chemotherapy treatments at a private hospital cost around P40,000 each. I still have 9 treatments to go, and thereafter a monthlong treatment plan that involves radiation therapy, five days a week. So you see, a cancer patient would have to put up with so much, financially, and suffer so many pains and aches, emotionally and physically, for an entire year or even more of treatment. Unfortunately, these treatments do not come with a guarantee of no recurrence in any other organ of the body.
Under the NICCA, a Philippine Cancer Center would be established in the National Capital Region with comprehensive cancer care centers and treatment units also to be put up in various regions. There would also be a Cancer Assistance Fund under the Department of Health that can provide financial assistance to patients in need. The law also calls for the expansion of PhilHealth’s benefit packages that are now limited only to a few selected hospitals and not for all kinds of cancer. The new law also mandates more affordable cancer drugs and improved palliative and pain management services.
I encourage cancer patients and advocates of cancer awareness to listen to a recent webinar presented by the Strong To Someone Facebook group, entitled “Cancer Care-Nections.” The webinar is still available on their Facebook page. In it, Dr. Clarito Cairo Jr., program manager of the DOH’s NICC program, lamented the lack of funding for the NICC. He said that next year’s line budget item for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, where cancer programs and services are included, have been reduced from the current P510 million to P370 million.
Why cut the budget for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases at a time when most ailments in the list of top 10 causes of death fall under this category? It doesn’t make sense. Why pass the National Integrated Cancer Control Act in 2019 only to keep failing to fund its provisions, and thus, failing to fulfill its objectives? Congress needs to be consistent in its priorities. Do not pass laws that you later opt not to even fund because that is simply toying with people’s emotions, or in this case, with their lives.
As a cancer patient whose brother also died of cancer, I appeal to our legislators to please fund RA 11215. Think of mothers with breast cancer who can’t even afford a mammogram; or workers that can’t even file for a sick leave because they have depleted all their leaves for chemotherapy sessions. Think of returning OFWs with cancer (there are quite a few of them especially from Hong Kong) that have to reunite with their families with such a diagnosis, no longer the triumphant breadwinner but the person that all must care for.
Peter Paul Perez of the Cancer Coalition of the Philippines said in the Strong for Someone webinar that around 96 cancer patients die every day. This number is far greater than the daily reported deaths due to Covid-19 virus, a number bound to drop even further once vaccines hit the market. We need champions in Congress and the Senate that would make sure this noble law is funded next year and beyond.
The budget hearings are not over. There is still time. Malasakit is a word that we keep hearing from our public officials, including our legislators. How about some malasakit for people with cancer? Is that too much to ask?
Susan V. Ople heads the Blas F. Ople Policy Center and Training Institute, a nonprofit organization that deals with labor and migration issues. She also represents the OFW sector in the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking.