DAVAO CITY—The confluence of livestock and plant diseases that pulled down a number of critical food industries has lent urgency to the call for the creation of a scientific body to “monitor and prepare” for emerging risks to human, plant and animal health, according to the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA).
This was actually proposed last month in a Senate hearing on food security issues, with focus on how the African Swine Fever compounded the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the hearing, MinDA chief, Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, argued for the expediency of a new body, as separate infections on fowls, swine and the banana export variety in different years took a collective toll, at a time when the country could ill afford having its food supply compromised.
“At the resumption [last month] of the Senate Committee of the Whole Hearing on the Food Security Risks due to the African Swine Fever (ASF), [I argued that] the proposed National Commission on Emerging Risks to the human population of the country, including the plant and animal industry, is a must, given our experiences with the recent pandemic and animal and plant diseases,” he said.
Piñol told the Senate hearing that the absence of a scientific body “has caused gargantuan problems and hardships experienced by the country, especially the handling and management of the Covid-19 pandemic and ASF.”
‘Unprepared’ bureaucracy
PIÑOL emphasized the scientific nature and composition of the body to reckon with what he described as critical and crucial disease outbreak events.
“In the case of ASF, for example, I had proposed, as early as 2018, the formation of a National Inter-Agency Task Force to help the Department of Agriculture (DA) address the threats of the hog viral disease,” Piñol recalled.
Several memoranda, including additional proposals for the installation of X-ray machines for inbound passengers’ accompanying and hand-carry luggage, were, however, not acted upon, he added.
Piñol warned of the “functional deficiency” of a bureaucracy in handling crisis situations, “since most of those in the critical agencies and bureaus of government are political appointees, and where problems on emerging threats and diseases are not fully appreciated.”
Besides, he added, the bureaucracy “by its very nature moves so slow and it could not possibly catch up with fast-mutating and spreading viruses like the Covid-19 or the ASF.”
This, he added, “was what exactly happened with our handling of Covid-19, where the initial data and information provided failed to emphasize the gravity of the threat.”
Just this week, local government executives, including a consultant in the Covid-19 task force, came out with strong interjection on the slow rollout of the vaccines, and issued stern warnings that some of the still-unused vaccines are already nearing expiration, the soonest by the end of the month.
The inability of authorities to arrest and respond to the various animal and plant infections “resulted in the collapse of the economy to negative 9.5 percent, wherein the hog industry lost 38 percent of its stocks, [the] banana industry lost a big share of the foreign market because of the Panama Disease; and the poultry industry [was] threatened by the recurrence of the bird flu.”
Science-based
PIÑOL said the setting up, through legislation, of a National Commission on Emerging Risks would greatly help the country’s leaders, especially the President, in decision-making and in crafting measures to protect the citizens of the country, including its agriculture and fisheries sector.
“Instead of leaving the decision-making to bureaucrats and government functionaries, scientists and experts will be relied upon to come up with science-based assessments and recommendations,” he emphasized.
Piñol said the commission should also focus on researches and studies to address problems like the development of vaccines using local viral strains and remedies for diseases.
“This is a very serious matter which we should really work on, or else, with the countless emerging threats faced by the world now, our country would never be able to get out of the rut,” he warned.
Late last year, the Mindanao campus of the University of the Philippines established the Center for Applied Modeling, Data Analytics and Bioinformatics for Decision-Support Systems in Health, or AMDABiDSS-Health.
This was renamed to the shorter Nicer Center, taken from the program of the Department of Science and Technology’s Niche Centers in the Regions, or Nicer program.
As its name implies, the center would deal with data analytics and prediction of infectious disease. At its initial launch in November last year, it undertook projects with research cooperation from the Mapua-ran Malayan Colleges Mindanao and the UP Mindanao-attached unit, the Philippine Genome Center-Mindanao.
UP Mindanao said the proposed center would provide the necessary support to public health decisions in the Southern Philippines by gathering information on infectious diseases and using advanced scientific approaches to better understand public health risks.
“Data analytics, mathematical modeling, genomics research, and quantitative risk analysis would be used to analyze and gather evidence to support proposed policies. The focus would be on more accurate disease prediction, improving the recovery prospects of infected individuals, and evaluating risk in communities through animal and water studies,” the UP Mindanao said.
It said local practices and attitudes would also be considered in making recommendations. Maps and data products would be made available to the public and other sectors to help create policies and decisions related to disease prevention and public health.
Aside from working with other academic institutions, the center would link up with the public sector and civil society organizations.
UP Mindanao said the Nicer center will fill the gap in “decision-support center for public health in the Southern Philippines.”
“With Mindanao’s cultural and biological diversity, it is more pressing to answer the challenges of disease investigation and disease-related policy implementation. The center would focus on the current Covid-19 pandemic and study other infectious diseases, such as dengue, in the future,” it added.
The center will “complement the ongoing local and national disease surveillance approaches and risk management,” while practitioners in the interdisciplinary study of infectious diseases in the Mindanao regions may also enhance their critical and analytic skills through the center’s online webinars or hands-on workshops.
Davao City to run own hospital soon
Meanwhile, the City Council here passed the “Davao City Hospital Ordinance” on May 4 to pave the way for a city-owned and -funded hospital. Its future operation would complement and help ease congestion in the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC), the largest government hospital operating in the city.
“The creation of the hospital also serves as the city’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as future outbreaks, and will provide the city with the needed manpower, facility and experience to counter such threats in the future,” said Councilor Mary Joselle Villafuerte, author of the ordinance.
The future city-owned hospital would have a 100-bed capacity and will be constructed at the UP-Mindanao campus in Bago Oshiro.
The city hospital would be a Level III training and Covid-19 response hospital to provide services for all kinds of illnesses, diseases, injuries and deformities.
The city government will allocate P300 million for the project.
The SPMC is currently the sole admitting hospital for Covid-19 patients following the directive last year of Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio to place only in reserve status all the private hospitals in terms of accepting Covid-19 cases. This was intended to shield the private hospital workers from getting infected and thus provide the city with a reserve health force when there is a swarming of cases.
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