The Pogo peril
Even as an emergency committee convened by the director-general of the World Health Organization meets today to determine if the new coronavirus (designated 2019-nCoV) constitutes a public health...
View ArticleNurses save lives and survive inhumane conditions
Filipino Nurses United pays tribute to all fellow nurses who bravely bring the best care they can provide for people wanting to recover and live, amid numerous challenges. For thousands of Filipino...
View ArticleSinophobia amid a global health emergency
Until early this week, the World Health Organization hesitated to call the new coronavirus infection that first broke out in Wuhan City, China, as more than a health emergency limited to one country or...
View ArticleThe bigger virus damage
From what we’re seeing, the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) could well hit the global economy far more severely than global public health itself. As of this writing, deaths directly attributed to...
View ArticleCrisis response
On Dec. 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) noted in China a new, SARS-like virus, later labeled COVID-19. By the week of Jan. 20, 2020, Philippine media began covering the contagion that had...
View ArticleGold eggs and mental health
In a recently published survey by LinkedIn, the Philippines ranked third for the most confident workers in achieving success, right after India and Indonesia. It seems that we, Filipino workers, are...
View ArticleThe socioeconomics of pandemics
After weeks of hiatus, there are now 16 new cases of COVID-19 in the Philippines. Before anything, let’s recap facts. In February, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency and...
View ArticleBrace, brace, kindly
Panic in slow motion is the way I would describe what’s going on since the declaration of a public health emergency in the Philippines because of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease). Even the World Health...
View ArticlePublic well-being for public security
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, as it was sweeping across 100 countries in six continents, infecting more than 120,000 and killing over...
View ArticleWe heal faster through collaboration
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities and intricacies in the country’s governance and health care system. Our battle against the novel coronavirus has become more challenging because of...
View ArticleChina’s aggression amid global crisis
The world continues to struggle with how to contain the transmission and mitigate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 416,000 people worldwide are reported to have died from COVID-19,...
View ArticleFrightening ourselves
Tomorrow, we mark an annual ritual, trooping to cemeteries to pay homage to the dead, laying flowers and candles at their graves and saying prayers for the “eternal repose of their souls.” The post...
View ArticleBereft and diminished
Juan Flavier’s passing bereaves not just his family, colleagues and friends but the nation as well. Tiny he may have been, yet what a gaping wound his death has left on the national psyche. The post...
View ArticleRole model
It has often been described as a baby factory, with newly-delivered mothers lying head to toe in shared beds because, as in most government hospitals, there is simply no space—or resources—to spare....
View ArticleManaging the threat
How prepared is the Philippines to cope with the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)? The post Managing the threat appeared first on Inquirer Opinion.
View ArticleThe perils of smoking
It cannot be denied that smoking is now one of the major health problems in the world. The celebration of World No Tobacco Day last May 31 was intended to make the people aware of the prevalence of...
View ArticleEurope’s ‘airpocalypse’
SINGAPORE—European policymakers like to lecture the rest of the world on air pollution. Asia, and China in particular, is a favorite target for criticism. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if no major...
View ArticleCoping with Zika
With the World Health Organization declaring the Zika virus a global threat, the Department of Health’s assurance that the Philippines remains Zika-free merits a second look. The post Coping with Zika...
View ArticleMeeting the Zika threat
Guesting on the occasion of International Women’s Day at the Bulong Pulungan sa Sofitel was Health Secretary Janette Garin who, I must say, is looking lovelier with each passing day, despite the many...
View ArticleDeadly dengue
Dengue was once just an intermittent part of the landscape, tropical Philippines being hospitable to the mosquito that spreads the virus. Now and then, stories spike of not only children but also grown...
View ArticleMalnutrition and the Olympics
There’s a whole constellation of issues surrounding the Summer Olympics unfolding in Rio de Janeiro. The post Malnutrition and the Olympics appeared first on Inquirer Opinion.
View ArticleWhat’s at stake with the dengue vaccine
The debate over the dengue vaccine is nothing new in the medical community, but it is far more complex than how it is being presented in popular discourse. The post What’s at stake with the dengue...
View ArticleGrim global status report on road safety
Today, 3,700 people will die on the world’s roads. The post Grim global status report on road safety appeared first on Inquirer Opinion.
View ArticleTragic outbreak
Health officials say 58 children aged 3 months to 4 years old who were brought to Manila’s San Lazaro Hospital have died of measles so far this year. The post Tragic outbreak appeared first on Inquirer...
View ArticleTurn off that screen
Can using gadgets all the time really be bad for children? The post Turn off that screen appeared first on Inquirer Opinion.
View ArticleHealth is wealth
So goes the saying preached in earlier times to schoolchildren. The adage applies both to individuals and communities. Even more than education, the population’s health sets limits on the pace of its...
View ArticleWorld Rabies Day: Have your pets spayed
The faint crying noises emanating from a garbage-filled mausoleum at the cemetery may have sounded like spooky specters to some. But a kind passerby suspected that the sounds had a more earthly...
View ArticleOur deadly roads
Imagine a disease—entirely preventable and curable, with the “medicine” readily available—that kills 35 Filipinos every day and an additional 348 left with serious disabilities. The public reaction...
View ArticleInvesting in frontline health workers
Abu Dhabi—Frontline health workers provide essential services—from administering vaccinations to collecting the data needed to anticipate disease outbreaks—where they are most needed. These workers...
View ArticlePreventing the next pandemic
Geneva—Imagine the following scenario. In a matter of days, a lethal influenza pandemic spreads around the world, halting trade and travel, triggering social chaos, gutting the global economy and...
View ArticleA woman-focused climate agenda
London—The facts speak for themselves. Women are likelier than men to live in poverty, and gendered social roles that reproduce socioeconomic power imbalances leave women and girls particularly...
View ArticleShambolic governance
It’s only been weeks since the administration had to drop, ignominiously, its much-lambasted order for motorcycle riders to install a barrier on such vehicles, ostensibly to prevent transmission of...
View ArticleChallenging gender inequality
Has March 2020 ended? If you recall, it was in March 2020 when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic, prompting several countries to impose lockdowns and travel restrictions. It...
View ArticleThree new drugs for COVID-19
Now that tocilizumab is running out of stock in our pharmaceutical outlets, it is quite exhilarating that doctors from the World Health Organization (WHO) have finally approved three drugs—artesunate,...
View ArticleWHO needs healthy financing
How much is our health worth? If COVID-19 has given any guide, clearly not enough. This stark reality has been ignored for too long—at a price the whole world can now see. Lip service, largely, was...
View ArticleNo room for complacency
The World Health Organization (WHO) last week declared a global health emergency on monkeypox, as confirmed cases totaled at least 20,300 in some 70 countries. The announcement was designed to trigger...
View ArticleCOVID-19: From pandemic to endemic
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 outbreak that had begun just a few months earlier in Wuhan, China, was a global pandemic. A pandemic is defined as “an...
View ArticleBeyond a disease-based model of health
Almaty, Kazakhstan—Here in Almaty—the sprawling, mountain-surrounded Central Asian city once known as Alma Ata—an important document was signed in September 1978 by member states of the World Health...
View ArticleUnacceptable excuse
The Department of Health (DOH) has shrugged off the wastage of some P15.6-billion worth of COVID-19 vaccines, saying this was well within the acceptable threshold of vaccine wastage set by the World...
View ArticleAct against ‘silent killer’
One in every seven Filipinos is afflicted with hepatitis B, the most common liver infection in the country, with 67 percent of those with the disease developing liver cancer, a specialist said in a...
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