April 30, 2019 — “One Health is a game changer as the Philippines moves towards the realization of the noble aspirations of the Universal Health Care Act,” Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairman Prospero de Vera declared during the 3rd Pan-Asian One Health Conference held on March 26-27, 2019 at the GT-Toyota Auditorium, UP Diliman, Quezon City.
Mr. de Vera was the closing speaker of the two-day conference, which gathered national and international experts in human medicine, agriculture, veterinary medicine, nutrition, and information technology under the umbrella of One Health.
One Health is an approach to designing and implementing programs, policies, legislation and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes. One Health issues include climate change, environmental impacts from industry, food safety and security, and zoonosis, to name but a few.
Practical applications of One Health have been seen in addressing concerns that transcend human, animal, and plant health, such as pandemics, emerging and re-emerging diseases, and antimicrobial resistance.
The two-day conference was organized by the University of the Philippines (Diliman, Manila, and Los Baños) and the University of California Davis. Under the aegis of the Commission on Higher Education-Philippine California Advanced Research Institutes, the two universities have partnered for a pioneering study entitled “One Health: Innovations in Early Detection and Interventions in Human, Animal, and Plant Health.” This study seeks to develop a web-based and mobile phone-based application which can be used by community health workers in human, animal, and plant disease surveillance. Data collected by the application will then be consolidated at the level of the municipal health officer (for human health), municipal agriculturist (for plant health), and municipal veterinarian (for animal health). Once proven successful in a test municipality, the system is expected to be replicated on a nationwide scale.
In his message, Mr. de Vera shared the optimism felt by the Philippine health sector with the recent passing of the Universal Health Care Act (UHC Act). The UHC Act mandates the provision of a comprehensive set of quality and cost-effective, promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services without causing financial hardship for all Filipinos.
Mr. de Vera tempered the optimism with the realization that challenges remain in delivering the promises of universal health care, including evolving threats to public health, increasing cost of medical services, and the seemingly bottomless pit that is the health care needs of the Filipino people.
“The call for progressive realization of universal health care in the Philippines is a recognition of the fact that this country, a middle-income economy, faces considerable challenges in health financing, human health resources, health technologies, service delivery, information, and leadership and governance. At the same time, the rise of pandemics, emerging, and re-emerging diseases that cut across human medicine, veterinary medicine, and agriculture means that separate efforts by individual sectors alone to address these health concerns will not be successful,” Mr. de Vera elucidated.
Mr. de Vera recognized the potential of One Health in general, and the study in particular, in addressing issues in surveillance, human health resources, and health information technology. He also foresaw the eventual roll out of the project to all municipalities nationwide consistent with the call for a people-oriented approach for the delivery of health services that are centered on people’s needs and well-being. He concluded his message with a call to action for everyone to work together in making the dream of accessible, affordable, and comprehensive health care a reality for all Filipinos.
Donn Mc Angelo T. Valdez | Published in UP Manila Healthscape March-April 2019
