The Freudian Slip Of A Bacolodnon

The topic for day 3 at the Global Health Course at the University of Tampere was Environment and Health. The two lecturers for the day, one from Tanzania and the other from The Philippines, talked about the impact of the environment to human and even non-human health. The springboard of the discussion was the effects of climate change and how it compounds natural disasters which are of great public health concerns. The day ended with a film showing on the documentary: Age of Stupid. The documentary highlighted the idea of humans going extinct and how we bungled the opportunity of choosing to save our endangered species and instead continued down the path of self destruction. It was an interesting documentary and many of the GHC participants were actually moved by the facts and real stories of how climate change has affected both the environment and the people living within it. For the Philippines, disasters are almost commonplace and being a disaster-prone country, we have establish...

Day 2 at the Global Health Course was sort of like a continuation of the course's introduction, only this time, each country group was given an opportunity to introduce their country and the health situation of their respective nations. Yesterday, we were preparing for our report on the Philippine Health Situation and we actually couldn't help but feel depressed. Let's face it. The Philippine Health Situation is not as rosy as our government would want us to think. We did mention in our report that only 1.5% of the total national budget for example is invested on health. Infant mortality rate may be "declining" but statistically, it is almost like "plateauing". The Brain drain phenomenon is of course a trend in the Philippines and the health sector is not spared. During our reporting, I introduced basically the geography, climate and political system of the Philippines. Doc Ryan talked about Economy and the financial management of our health budget (if t...

The day started quite early for me. Although I set up my alarm clock at 6am, I was already awake by 4am. After breakfast, we started heading for the venue at around 8 a.m. The Pinoys decided to walk from our flat going to the campus instead of taking the bus. It was quite a long walk, longer than we expected, but it was an opportunity to meet the other participants. During the orientation, we were able to introduce ourselves and meet our teachers. Doc Ian Gomez from the Philippines is one of them. The other participants are from Nepal, Tanzania, Chile and of course Finland. There is one from Malawi. Not all are medical doctors, although majority are. There are some dentists and veterinarians as well. Per Ashorn gave an interesting introduction on Global Health. The teaser was how to define global health. Among "experts", there is even an argument as to the "accurate" definition of global health. It seems that when one talks about international health or global healt...

Less than 24 hours ago, I found myself traveling once again out of the country to attend this year's Global Health Course at the University of Tampere, Finland. I am one of four Filipino doctors who will be participating in this year's Global Health Course, a diploma course usually offered to countries such as Chile, Nepal, Tanzania and Finland and The Philippines of course. I left Bacolod at 10:35 in the morning of May 31. My wife and two kids brought me to the airport. The last time I left them for a month was when I went to the US to attend a leadership program at Northern Illinois University. The four of us: Doc Paul, Doc Gene, Doc Ryan and myself, left Manila at around 8 pm, heading to Helsinki via Hong Kong. It was a 10-hour trip from Hong Kong to Helsinki. We arrived at Helsinki at around 6 a.m. (Helsinki Time) and boarded the bus to Tampere at around 8:15am. We arrived at Tampere around 11 am. We were then brought to our apartment where each of us was given a room of ou...

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