August Is Lung Month


Although I feel so drained and demoralized as a doctor to the barrio, life has to continue and I have to go back to work. Anyways, I still have 3 months left as a doctor to the barrio. And the next 3 months will be the busiest perhaps in my career as a doctor to the barrio. For example, August is Lung Month and we started the tradition of celebrating it last year with a TB caravan around the Poblacion area. But the Lung Month celebration this year will not only focus on Tuberculosis. We will also be focusing Smoking and even breastfeeding. We wanted to give attention to these other programs of the department of health.

So the second week of August will be Breastfeeding Week, and the highlight of the Breastfeeding week will be a competition among breastfeeding mothers representing the 9 barangays. We will be holding it on the 11th, during the Eve of the town's anniversary. Dubbed as the Breast(milk) Olympics, we will be having contests for breastfeeding mothers, not to mention mothers' classes promoting breastfeeding.

The third week of August will be Pulmonary Tuberculosis Week, and the highlights will be the TB barangay Forum which we will be holding in 3 focus barangays. We call them focus barangays because these are the barangays with the most number of Pulmonary TB cases. We will be starting the TB Barangay Forum at Barangay Cabia-an on the 17th, followed by Barangay Haba on the morning of 19th and Barangay West-Barangay East in the afternoon of the same day. The objective is to increase awareness of among the people and to eliminate the stigma or "shame" which many TB patients feel thus preventing them from seeking early consultation.

During August 18, we have scheduled a Bloodletting activity, this time to be spearheaded by CLMMRH.

The last week of August will be Anti-smoking Week and will be focusing more on high school and college students. We will be holding campus tours showing the effects of smoking. The objective is to discourage teenagers from initiating cigarette smoking. If we can start them early, then it would be better.

Hopefully, our activities will be successful and will be reflected by improved health indicators especially with regards to our Healthy Lifestyle Program and TB program.


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