The UP College of Public Health (CPH) held a virtual press conference on 3 July 2020 to discuss its faculty statement entitled “Enhancing Public Health, Surveillance, and Response in time of COVID-19 in the Philippines: Collaboration, Consensus, and Capacity Building.”
Despite the anxiety of Filipinos due to the continuous lockdown, all sectors, private and public, and individuals, must understand and learn their part in “living with the virus.”
As CPH Dean Dr. Vicente Y. Belizario, Jr. said during the press conference, managing COVID-19 at the population level is about preventing illness and bringing COVID-19 to levels low enough that it becomes something negligible and something we can live with. “Don’t think the solution for COVID-19 is at hand; COVID-19 is here to stay similar to measles and polio that have been around for a long time and even with available vaccines, we still encounter outbreaks here and there. CPH calls for enhancing surveillance and response as part of the battle against COVID-19.”
Private corporations, aside from ensuring safety of their staff and customers, must help teach behavior modification and implement policies that will ensure continued safe practices. They can work with both the Department of Health (DOH), CPH, and other expert groups.
Along with CPH faculty Dr. Katherine Ann V. Reyes, Dean Belizario said in the same presser that the private sector should work with DOH in providing technical and logistic support for policy development and response formulation. “So much of the private sector have the expertise and means to complement government efforts. We have many communication experts from this sector who have more effective ways of delivering health messages. This government-private partnership must be sustained. This is collaboration in our official statement on COVID-19— that we contribute our share, our expertise in the interest of the public’s health.”
The government’s response in terms of policy and action must be based on science and evidence. Aside from physical restrictions, the DOH, Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases, and National Task Force for COVID-19 must implement more public health education and engagement that would create the right mindset and attitudes towards “living with the virus. ”
Dean Belizario highlighted the importance of understanding the data at hand, guided by consensus of a multidisciplinary group of experts. This was further emphasized by Assistant Professor Kim Carmela Co of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. “The response needs to be directed by data and evidence from surveillance systems.We cannot expect that Local Government Units (LGUs) will work on their own. Guided by DOH policies and guidelines, LGUs can be assisted by experts in the academe who can provide technical support for local surveillance and response. In the meantime, let concerted action by all concerned be guided by available data. Public health is concerted action for the control and prevention of COVID-19 and other major public health challenges guided by data and evidence.”
In the same presser, CPH Chair of Health Promotion and Education Buenalyn Ramos-Mortel discussed health communications during COVID-19. She explained that when it comes to health promotion, we need to look at collaborative actions involving the DOH, various LGUs, disaster relief groups, and other concerned parties dealing with health communications as part of managing the pandemic.
The CPH statement emphasized that its faculty are joining hands with the DOH and other government and non-government agencies as well as the rest of the country in helping to enhance surveillance and response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The faculty member speakers mentioned that Filipinos from the public and private sectors must learn situational awareness as well as practice public health protocols for this pandemic to be well managed.
