BY ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN: DOH, IT'S ABOUT TIME
MANILA, FEBRUARY 15, 2010 (STAR) SKETCHES By Ana Marie Pamintuan - The government’s chief epidemiologist, Dr. Eric Tayag, was photographed personally distributing condoms to the hordes of people who descended last Saturday on Manila’s Dangwa Flower Market to buy blooms for their beloved.On the eve of Valentine’s Day, prices of long-stemmed roses could give you a heart attack, even in Metro Manila’s main flower distribution center – the area in Dimasalang that grew around the terminal of the Dangwa buses that bring down cut flowers from Baguio City.
But even on Valentine’s Day, Dangwa blooms are still cheaper than those in regular flower shops. So consumers, mostly men, flocked Saturday to the flower market, and received free condoms from Doctor Tayag, head of the National Epidemiology Center of the Department of Health (DOH).
The DOH and Malacañang clarified that the free condoms did not come from the government. I can believe that, since the Arroyo administration refuses to provide funding for contraceptives. The advertising materials at Dangwa also indicated that the maker of condom giant Trust was a key sponsor of the free rubbers.
But Tayag handed out the condoms, so it was a government-backed program. As DOH officials themselves announced, the freebies were part of a government campaign to fight the spread of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
DOH and Malacañang officials had to emphasize that the government was not promoting artificial contraception or sexual promiscuity. Until the dying gasps of this administration, it will officially profess to toe the Church line on this hot potato.
But the sight of the government‘s chief disease control expert giving away condoms is a welcome development.
As the DOH distributed condoms, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) announced that it would intensify its campaign against the spread of AIDS/HIV in the workplace.
Health experts have expressed concern over the rise in HIV cases particularly among employees in call centers.
Like the DOH, the professed objective of the DOLE is to promote safe sex rather than artificial contraception.
The DOH is now headed by top cardiologist Esperanza Cabral, who in her former post as secretary of social welfare and development had openly expressed support for the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill. Cabral is not running for public office in May, and she has a life to return to after the end of her stint in the Cabinet, so she can afford to ignore the myth of the Catholic vote. She is currently in the United States, from where she clarified yesterday that the condom distribution is a private initiative.
And yet there was Tayag yesterday, handing out the free condoms.
If the government has to take such roundabout routes to promote the use of condoms, it’s good enough for family planning advocates.
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Those advocates faced a double whammy when the Arroyo administration’s policy of benign neglect of family planning and reproductive health was compounded by the Bush administration’s scrapping of US aid for programs promoting contraception overseas. Bush’s successor Barack Obama has vowed to revive such aid programs.
Corazon Aquino, so (genuinely) devout she could be a candidate for sainthood, never abandoned family planning programs in the same way that President Arroyo has done.
The Aquino administration, though cash-strapped, conducted information drives on reproductive health nationwide and, within its resources, gave the poor access to contraceptive devices. It’s not surprising that Cory Aquino’s only son Noynoy endorsed the RH bill, though he seems to be waffling now that he’s running for president and his campaign is faltering.
Fidel Ramos, the country’s first Protestant president, actively promoted contraception, with his health secretary Juan Flavier, also a non-Catholic, among the most effective advocates of birth control.
Joseph Estrada, who won by a landslide despite an aggressive campaign against him by the Church, also promoted birth control.
Cory Aquino was confident that her piety would not be suspect even if she promoted family planning.
Her two successors did not owe their rise to power to the Church and saw no need to toe the Catholic line on population policy. This cannot be said of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who counts the Church among her staunchest supporters, despite a few dissenting voices among the bishops. It would be interesting to find out if GMA ever used contraceptives.
Her allies in the legislature sat on the RH bill, guaranteeing its death in the 14th Congress.
Local executives in fact need not wait for the approval of that bill to promote reproductive health. On their own, local governments can disseminate information on safe sex and family planning, and can provide contraceptives to those who are interested.
The biggest beneficiaries of such programs are the poor. In several exclusive schools, children get sex education in grade school, to accompany free mass circumcision.
Educated women are aware of both natural and artificial methods of contraception, and can afford contraceptives if they want. They are free to make a choice.
The poor? They are unaware of the choices. They buy herbs in Quiapo stalls to induce abortion. They climb trees and jump down in hopes of ending a pregnancy. Or they seek help from midwives. Sometimes they are given herbs; sometimes, as in the cases of two girls I know, they are given wires shaped like those in clothes hangers and instructed to scrape out the fetus themselves. Both girls nearly died. In adulthood they had trouble getting pregnant.
A married woman I know managed to get hold of birth control pills, but used them for several months like morning-after medicine. She got pregnant and gave birth to a deformed baby who died after a few days.
Would condoms have made the two girls more sexually adventurous? That’s speculative; both girls have been monogamous wives for many years now. But condoms, pills and accurate information about their reproductive health would surely have prevented the pregnancies that they aborted, at great risk to their young lives.
Now the DOH has started reviving its reproductive health program. It’s about time.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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