A regular and bigger budget is what the National Integrated Cancer Control Act (NICCA) needs to be fully implemented, according to cancer control advocates and experts.
Carmen Auste, vice president of Cancer Coalition, pleaded for Congress to increase funds for the cancer control program so that the Department of Health (DOH) as main implementor can carry out the provisions of the four-year-old NICCA. “The law is good only on paper if it remains unfunded. We are thankful for the budget we now have but we need to increase it based on the data we have,” Auste said at the Philippine National Cancer Summit held recently.
Teodoro Padilla, executive director of the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), said that funding the law can help improve the whole process of cancer control, including access to medicines.
“Only 13 percent of new drugs find their way locally although they are already available in other countries. Cancer is something we could live with and not die from. But we need all the tools at the disposal of the patients,” he said in the same forum. “Access delayed means treatment denied,” Padilla added paraphrasing an old legal adage.
Orlando Oxales, convener of the Citizens Watch, called on the lawmakers to institutionalize and come up with a concrete program of increasing the budget of the Cancer Assistance Fund (CAF).
“Will we see the line item there permanently or we will have to fight again for it? We are again working regularly with stakeholders to anticipate this next cycle of budget,” he disclosed.
The DOH was given about P1 billion in previous years to fight cancer but even for breast cancer alone, with 27,000 new cases and 9,000 deaths here annually, that amount needs to be augmented.
The cancer summit coincided with nationwide programs commemorating the Cancer Awareness Month every February, the same month when NICCA was signed into law in 2019.