House Deputy Speaker and Las Piñas Rep. Camille Villar on Monday called for the immediate passage of a bill seeking to create a PHP10-billion cancer fund for poor Filipino cancer patients and to provide them with free medicines.
Villar underscored the urgent need for government to give indigent and underprivileged cancer patients the support to fight the disease.
“Considering that one of the goals of the national economy is a more equitable distribution of opportunities and raising the quality of life for all, especially the underprivileged, it is high time that those who have less in life be given the lifeline to fight the cancer disease despite their lack of resources,” Villar said in relation to House Bill 5686, which she filed earlier.
Villar said the incidence and mortality rate of cancer in the Philippines have been increasing in the past decades.
“This trend is expected to continue if organized and sustained specialized care and preventive measures against cancer are not initiated,” she added.
Official data shows that cancer is the third leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the country.
The leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the country are lung, liver, breast, colon cancers and leukemia. Cancer, which afflicts 189 per 100,000 population, kills four Filipinos every hour or 103 every day.
Villar said cancer treatment in the country is expensive, adding that chemotherapy for cancer patients is estimated to cost about PHP100,000 per session.
She said the cost of treatment by radiation, or even examination by MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), is also burdensome even to middle-income patients, and often beyond the reach of the poor.
“This is why cancer has gained a reputation as the disease for the rich. The painful truth is that it can afflict anybody, regardless of economic status,” she added.
To give poor, vulnerable cancer patients the hope of healing and recovery, Villar is proposing the establishment of a cancer treatment program to be administered by the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) through its accredited government hospitals in specific congressional districts to be known as health districts.
The program shall be limited to indigent and underprivileged cancer patient beneficiaries to be identified by the PhilHealth in close coordination with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Department of Health (DOH), and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).
The PhilHealth, jointly with the DSWD, DOH and DILG and relevant private groups, including the association of hospitals and medical institutions and groups of patients, shall draft the implementing rules and regulations to carry out the proposed measure.
HB 5686 is proposing the inclusion of a PHP10-billion funding in the annual budget of the DOH for the cancer treatment program.
“Ang kalusugan ng bawat Pilipino, lalo na ang mga mahihirap, ay responsibilidad ng pamahalaan (The health of every Filipino, especially the poor, is a responsibility of the government),” Villar said.
The immediate approval of the measure and the establishment of the proposed cancer treatment program would give indigent and underprivileged cancer patients the fighting chance to survive this health menace, she added. (PNA)
