A SENATOR on Tuesday reiterated the urgency of creating a disease prevention and control center to ensure a stronger response against public health emergencies in the future.
“To avoid heavily burdening our public health system that may signify serious repercussions, including countless morbidities and mortalities, trade disruptions and negative effect on the economy, our proposed measure emphasizes on the importance of having a strong public health capacity in communities across the country before any public health emergency occurs,”
Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian said in a statement in time for the observance of International Day of Epidemic Preparedness on Dec. 27.
Mr. Gatchalian filed in July Senate Bill 825 or the Disease Prevention and Control Act.
“The current COVID-19 situation emphasizes the risks and highlights the need to improve preparedness, surveillance and response at local, national and international levels against future pandemics,” Mr. Gatchalian said in the bill’s explanatory note.
The measure is currently pending at the Senate Committee on Health Demography.
A counterpart bill in the House of Representatives, numbered 6522 and titled Philippine Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) Act, was approved on final reading on Dec. 12.
“The country’s reactive and bureaucratic approach in detecting and fighting against communicable diseases has proven to be fatal as the slow response in handling COVID-19 outbreak by the health department has affected and taken the lives of our frontline health workers, and endangered millions of lives of ordinary Filipinos,” Mr. Gatchalian said in the bill.
In the Senate version of the proposed law, the center will have the following functions: active surveillance, research, and recommendation of preventive measures against infectious diseases, among others.
It is also mandated to assess and support local government units in preventing communicable diseases, and determine whether to declare a public health emergency an epidemic.
The center will be an attached agency of the Health department, and will be composed of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, Epidemiology Bureau, Health Emergency Management Bureau, Bureau of Quarantine, and Health Promotion and Communication Service. — Beatriz Marie D. Cruz
