The Freudian Slip Of A Bacolodnon

I am currently waiting for the second Presidential debate, I am thinking of how the next Administration should address the health challenges of the country. The facts are clear, our country still has to really achieve high performance in Immunization coverage, improve services in maternal and child health and address access to safe drinking water and sanitation. So, if given the choice, based on my experience as a former Doctor to the Barrios and working with more than 72 local government units and their municipal health offices, I want the next President to focus on the following items, from the most immediate to long-term: 1. Genuine Universal Health Care - the keyword here is genuine. The Aquino administration pushed for Kalusugang Pangkahalatan and although there have been gains it is not really Universal as what the current administration would like to believe. Universal Healthcare implies basic and essential health services are made available for everyone . And I mean everyon...

As a professor in medical school teaching Family and Community Medicine, one of my topics is to teach Primary Health Care. I would usually discuss the Alma Ata Declaration Document with the class and discuss historical and current events related to Primary Health Care in the Philippine experience. But I have always felt that the best way to teach Primary Health Care is to let the students experience it for themselves so for the past two years, I have been challenging my third year med students to come up with a community project with a partner "community" of choice where they would come up with a project for the community, particularly one that addresses a health issue. The objective is for them to practice the principles on PHC that they have learned in school. They would write a monthly progress report about what they have done. As a final output they would come up with a video documentary that would describe their project and experience. For this year, I had these amazi...

Nowadays, we hear more often about pursuing one's passion at work and career. Especially in my kind of work where we are supposed to do the "impossible" that passion has become a key word and ingredient in driving the internal motivation to pursue the almost unachievable. Passion is such a big word and its true essence is sometimes hardly noticed. It comes from the Latin word passio which means "to suffer" or "to endure". So your passion is something you are willing to endure for or suffer. It is something that you are willing to do even if it hurts. Its oldest root word "pei" literally means "to hurt". And it is usually referred to the sufferings of Christ on the Cross. In other words, me ganung level ang "passion" yung handa kang magpakamatay . Pag hindi ka nasasaktan, hindi yan passion. Whether your passion is a person, a relationship or an advocacy or issue or set of values and beliefs, you are willing to offer you ...