At a colourful World TB Day event in the Philippines' Batangas City, the Secretary of the Department of Health, the Provincial Governor, members of the Philippine Coalition Against Tuberculosis (PhilCAT) and TB survivors joined forces to call for an end to TB.
Mr Matthew Coghlan, Regional Director of The Union Asia Pacific Office in Singapore, was invited by the Union constituent member, Philippines Tuberculosis Society (PTSI), to attend the event and learn more about TB in that country.
In a colourful display, the ceremony started with NGOs and companies parading their organisational banners to the cheers of a buzzing, youthful audience and to the fiesta soundtrack of a brass band. TB survivors from Movement for Healthy Lungs, (Samahan ng Lusog-Baga), sang two beautiful songs – Michael Jackson’s "Heal the World" and Hawak Kamay ("Hand in Hand"). The performances culminated in a cheer-dance competition between private and public groups, including local government representatives, that featured contemporary routines to pounding beats with the occasional hair-raising high-wire move.
Speakers included the Governor of Batangas, the Honorable Vilma Santos-Recto, who spoke of her commitment to and optimism about finding and treating TB in her Province. She is a famous actress, who is popularly known as Ate Vi or "Big Sister" – consequently, she was the highlight of the day for many of the young.
Memory and hope were the themes of the keynote address given by the Honorable Janette L Garin, Secretary of the DOH. She remembered those who have died of this “dreaded diseased,” but praised the Philippines treatment success rate of 88% resulting in 8,000 lives being saved every year. Secretary Garin called for the eradication of TB in the country in the same way that it was able to eradicate polio in the early 1990s with the help of public and private sector to find, treat and cure TB – Hanapin, Gamutin, Pagalingin.
The Philippines is a high-burden TB country, where two-thirds of the population has been infected. There are at least 60,000 cases that are not detected every year, mainly amongst marginalised and vulnerable groups, such as the urban poor, indigenous peoples, prisoners and people living with HIV, which compounds the transmission of the disease and the emergence of its drug-resistant forms.
PhilCAT is an umbrella group of NGOs, companies and government that was set up to fight TB in the early 1990s. It includes the much-older PTSI, which was established in 1910, a decade before The Union.