Bacolod City – An ordinance providing maintenance medicine for hypertension and diabetes to indigent senior citizens of Bacolod City, was approved by the Bacolod Sangguniang Panlungsod on third and final reading recently.
The ordinance authored by Councilor Celia Matea Flor said that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), raised blood pressure is estimated to cause 7.5 million deaths, and about 12.8 percent of the total of all deaths. Raised blood pressure is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease and ischemic, as well as hemorrhagic stroke.
The same organization disclosed that the number of people with diabetes has risen from 3 percent between 2000 and 2019. In lower-middle-income countries, the mortality rate due to diabetes increased by 13 percent. Diabetes is a major cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke, and lower limb amputation, it said.
The ordinance said the maintenance medicines for hypertension and diabetes that will be given depending on the recommendation of the City Health Office are: Amlodopine, Losartan, Metoprolol, Metoprolol Tartrate, and Simvastatin/Rosuvastatin. Maintenance medicine for diabetes are: Metformin and Insulin 70/30.
An initial P4 million per year will be appropriated from the city’s General Fund for maintenance medicines of indigent senior citizens of Bacolod City, subject to existing auditing rules and regulations, it added. (Chrysee Semillano via The Visayan Daily Star (TVDS), photo courtesy of TVDS)