House OKs bill on stronger PH security
A MEASURE that seeks to introduce essential activities that are required to minimize the danger and impact of acute public health events that endanger the collective health of the country’s population has hurdled the House of Representatives.
House Bill (HB) 9561 – which seeks to establish a health security national action plan and strengthen institutional capacity to implement disease prevention, surveillance, control, and response
systems and implement contingency plans to deal with public health events and emergencies, deliberate release of biological or chemical agents intended to harm civilian populations, or attack to the health care delivery system – was passed on third and final reading.
The said bill, which is a consolidated version of HB 6493 and HB 6081 filed by Tan and Muntinlupa Rep. Ruffy Biazon, respectively, calls for the creation of a Philippine Health Security Council (PHSC).
The PHSC will be tasked to craft a national health security plan, which Tan, in her sponsorship speech as chairperson of the House committee on health and principal author of the bill, described as “a country owned, multi-year, planning process that can accelerate the implementation of the country’s International Health Regulations or IHR core capacities.”
Tan said “it captures national priorities for health security, brings sectors together, identifies partners and allocates resources for health security capacity development. It also serves as an overarching process to capture all ongoing preparedness initiatives along with the country’s governance mechanisms for emergency and disaster risk management.”
Tan explained that the proposed measure will provide and institutionalize the needed synergy with the landmark “Universal Health Care Act” (UHC) and bring into fruition the completion of the other side of the coin under the ambit of health systems strengthening policy mechanism – UHC and health security having been frequently considered as “two sides of the same coin”.
Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez Jr. and Chief Implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19 (NTF COVID-19) had previously underscored the need to pass the “Philippine Health Security Act” in response to the current health crisis inasmuch as this proposed law will complement the UHC Law by scaling up the nation’s health care system in preparation for another pandemic that may hit the country.
Galvez was quoted as saying that “We have to dedicate our time or really have a subsistence for the next pandemic. I believe the UHC that we have promoted and enacted is not yet enough. We have to work for a Health Security Act in order for us to fully bridge the valley of death,” he said.
