HOUSE deputy speaker and Las Piñas Rep. Camille Villar on Monday urged her colleagues at the House of Representatives to support the passage of a bill creating a P10-billion cancer fund and free medicine assistance program for poor patients.
“Considering that one of the goals of the national economy is a more equitable distribution of opportunities and raising the quality of life for all, especially the underprivileged, it is high time that those who have less in life be given the lifeline to fight the cancer disease despite their lack of resources,” Villar said in filing House Bill 5686.
“The incidence and mortality rate of cancer in the Philippines has been increasing in the past decades. This trend is expected to continue if organized and sustained specialized care and preventive measures against cancer are not initiated,” she added.
Data show that cancer is the third leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the country. The leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the country are lung, liver, breast, colon cancers and leukemia. Cancer, which afflicts 189 people per 100,000 population, kills four Filipinos every hour or 103 every day.
Cancer treatment in the country is expensive, Villar said, noting that chemotherapy for cancer patients is estimated to cost about P100,000 per session. She added that the cost of treatment by radiation, or even examination by MRI, is likewise burdensome even to middle-income patients, and often beyond the reach of the poor.
“This is why cancer has gained a reputation as the disease for the rich. The painful truth is that it can afflict anybody, regardless of economic status,” she pointed out.
To give poor cancer patients the hope of healing and recovery, Villar proposed the establishment of a cancer treatment program to be administered by the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) through its accredited government hospitals in specific congressional areas to be known as health districts.
The program will be limited to indigent and underprivileged cancer patients to be identified by the PhilHealth in close coordination with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Department of Health (DOH), and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).
The PhilHealth, jointly with the DSWD, DOH, DILG, and relevant private groups, including the association of hospitals and medical institutions and groups of patients, are mandated to draft the implementing rules and regulations to carry out the proposed measure.
HB 5686 seeks the inclusion of a P10-billion funding in the annual budget of the DOH for the cancer treatment program.
According to Villar, "the immediate approval of HB 5686 and the establishment of the proposed cancer treatment program would give indigent and underprivileged cancer patients the fighting chance to overcome the disease.
