Rx for health for P-Noy

In his message that accompanies the proposed budget for 2011, President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III notes that the allocation for health is 13.6 percent higher than 2010’s P29.3 billion – which is enrolled in the 2010 General Appropriations Act to be only P28.7 billion.

Yet if one were to compare health’s share of the budget for this year and what the corresponding figure could be in the next, the difference isn’t much.

For 2010, the health allocation is 1.8 percent of the P1.54-trillion national purse. For 2011, the Aquino administration is proposing P32.62 billion for health, or 1.9 percent of the P1.64-trillion national budget. The increase would amount to just a tenth of a percentage point.

On the campaign trail as a candidate, however, Aquino had promised to give much more to health – at least five percent of the national budget. It would seem now that he is off by at least 3.1 percentage points or almost P50 billion in peso terms.

In truth, more than just more money and cash-transfer schemes for the poor, experts say the health sector needs real, sustainable reforms and direction. Health care services remain largely “feeble” and “infirm” for Filipinos with less education and income, and residing in the farthermost farms and hovels.

The most vulnerable of the poor are the mothers who, for lack of health services and personnel, continue to die at the rate of 12 a day, from childbirth complications. Thus, apart from the Millennium Development Goal No. 2 (achieving universal primary education), the Philippines is most likely to also miss MDG No. 5 ( improve maternal health), by the 2015 deadline.