HEALTH PROBLEM IN THE PHILIPPINES

May 16, 2009

The struggle against disease has progressed considerably over the years. Health conditions in the Philippines in 1990 approximated to those in other Southeast Asian countries but lagged behind those in the West. Life expectancy, for instance, increased from 51.2 years in 1960 to 69 years for women and 63 years for men in 1990. Infant mortality was 101 per 1,000 in 1950 and had dropped to 51.6 per 1,000 in 1989. In 1923 approximately 76 percent of deaths were caused by communicable diseases. By 1980 deaths from communicable diseases had declined to about 26 percent.

In 1989 the ratio of physicians and hospitals to the total population was similar to that in a number of other Southeast Asian countries, but considerably below that in Europe and North America. Most health care personnel and facilities were concentrated in urban areas. There was substantial migration of physicians and nurses to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, but there are no reliable figures to indicate what effect this had on the Philippines. Hospital equipment often did not function because there were insufficient technicians capable of maintaining it, but the 1990 report of the Department of Health said that centers for the repair and maintenance of hospital equipment expected to alleviate this problem.

A little more than one-half of the infants and children received a complete series of immunization shots, a major step in preventive medicine, but obviously far short of a desirable goal. The problem was especially difficult in rural areas. The Department of Health had made efforts to provide every barangay with at least minimum health care, but doing so was both difficult and expensive, and the more remote areas inevitably received less attention.

Although very few Filipinos have been infected with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), concern about the disease has caused authorities to give it considerable attention. By April 1979, only three people had died from AIDS, two of whom were overseas Filipinos visiting the homeland and one an American civilian who had contracted the disease outside the Philippines. In 1985 the Department of Health and the United States Naval Medical Research unit tested more than 17,000 people, including some 14,000 hospitality girls in Olangapo and a number of other Filipino cities. They identified twenty-one women as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) carriers. The American sponsorship of the study was seized upon as argument for ending the Military Bases Agreement with the United States. A June 1990 Philippine government study reported that at that time AIDS was growing at the rate of four cases a month and that twenty people had died from the disease. The study indicated that most AIDS cases in the Philippines were transmitted by heterosexual activity. An April 30, 1991, Department of Health report indicated that 240 Filipinos were infected with AIDS.

Like many other countries, the Philippines has a problem with illicit drugs. Official Philippine government statistics for 1989 indicate only 1,733 addicts, but the assumption was that the real number was from ten to a hundred times as great. The government has instituted both education and treatment programs, but it was uncertain how effective these programs would be. There also was a problem with inadequatedly tested legal drugs. In 1983, more than 265 pharmaceutical products were sold in the Philippines that were banned in many other countries. The Department of Health succeeded in eliminating 128 of them by 1988. Attempts to eliminate others have been blocked by the courts, which ruled that the department had acted without due process.

Malnutrition has been a perennial concern of the Philippine government and health care professionals. In 1987 the Department of Health reported that 2.8 percent of preschoolers were suffering from third-degree malnutrition and 17.6 percent from second-degree malnutrition. To alleviate this problem, the government targeted food assistance for nearly 500,000 preschoolers and lactating mothers.

Nutrition has shown some improvement. In 1955 government statistics estimated the daily per capita available food supply at only 80 percent of sufficiency. In 1986 it had improved to 101.8 percent. In the same period, the consumption of milk nearly tripled and the consumption of fats and oils more than doubled.

The Philippines has a dual health care system consisting of modern (Western) and traditional medicine. The modern system is based on the germ theory of disease and has scientifically trained practitioners. The traditional approach assumes that illness is caused by a breach of taboos set by supernatural forces. It is not unusual for an individual to alternate between the two forms of medicine. If the benefits of modern medicine are immediately obvious–eyeglasses, for instance–then there is little argument. If there is no immediate cure, the impulse to turn to the traditional healer is often strong.

One type of traditional healer that attracted the attention of foreigners as well as Filipinos was the so-called psychic surgeon, who professed to be able to operate without using a scalpel or drawing blood. Some practitioners attracted a considerable clientele and established lucrative practices. Travel agents in the United States credited these “surgeons” with generating travel to the Philippines.

Although medical treatment had improved and services had expanded, pervasive poverty and lack of access to family planning detracted from the general health of the Philippine people. In 1990 approximately 50 percent of the population was listed below the poverty line (down from 59 percent in 1985). A high rate of childbirth tended both to deplete family resources and to be injurious to the health of the mother. The main general helath hazards were pulmonary, cardivascular, and gastrointestinal disorders.

On my own point of view I recommend to strengthened the social security system including Medicare (PhilHealth) program with wide coverage of the regularly employed urban workers. It offered a partial shield against disaster, but was limited both by the generally low level of incomes, which reduced benefits, and by the exclusion of most workers in agriculture. In my research on April 1989, out of more than 22 million employed individuals, a little more than 10.5 million were covered by social security. In health care and social security, as with other services, the Philippines entered the 1990s as a modernizing society struggling with limited success against heavy odds to apply scarce financial resources to provide its people with a better life.

 

-roy dante ogurida

 

GOVERNMENT ON PUMP PRIMING THE ECONOMY

Government should pump-prime the economy by spending a lot on massive infrastructure, education, health and other important equally important matters so that there will be no recession.

 

You’ve probably heard the expression “pump priming the economy.” It was used by the Ramos and Estrada administrations before, and is now apparently being used by the current government, in an effort to stimulate the economy into higher growth.

 

The metaphor comes from the way a dried-up water pump can be made to bring forth water again by pouring water into (”priming”) the pump and filling the pipe connecting it to the groundwater below, thereby helping draw out the water continuously thereafter.

 

This is for the reason that the private sector tends not to spend and hold on to their cash.

 

That is why if there will be no money that would be in circulation just because the private sector would go slow on their spending, then government should get in and spend a lot so there will be no recession.

Lord John Maynard Keynes’ legacy to economic knowledge was the prescription that government can spend its way out of an economic recession. Like pouring water into a dry pump, government can pour money into the economy to draw out the money lying in private hands therein. This happens through the way government spending undergoes a process that multiplies the original spending–and the economic activity it directly provokes–several times over.

As I sum it up, this multiplier process happens because one person’s spending is another one’s income. Subject to their saving behavior, this income then funds new spending that again becomes income for others, and so on, going round and round and generating more production and income along the way. The more people spend out of each round of income, and the less they spend on imported goods, the greater the multiplier effect will be.

COMBATING CORRUPTION IN THE PHILIPPINES

To fight corruption in the Philippines is to adopted a tough anti-corruption policy targeted at ensuring sustainable and equitable development. The objective is to combat corruption through its general work on market liberalization and public sector reform; by providing explicit support for selective anti-corruption initiatives; and by ensuring that its own staff and projects adhere to the highest levels of integrity.

The objective of these was to raise awareness of the seriousness of the corruption problem and to identify effective anti-corruption strategies.

·       The pernicious effects of corruption: corruption erodes confidence in political institutions and endangers public sector reforms; exacts a disproportionate cost on the poor who may be deprived of basic public services; distorts the allocation of resources and undermines competition in the market place. Empirical evidence demonstrates that corruption has a devastating effect on investment, growth, and development.

·         Agreed on the necessity to fight all types of corruption on all levels and recognized progress made in some countries to develop effective anti-corruption programmes.

·         Recognized the need to address the international dimension of corruption, organised crime and money laundering.

·         Identified priority measures to fight corruption including:

• strengthening state institutions by improving enforcement and monitoring;
• providing for transparency and accountability;
• enabling independent investigative and judiciary bodies;
• building public/private partnerships and networks to monitor anti-corruption activities and underpin reform efforts;
• establishing participatory and proactive strategies to enhance anti-corruption efforts of all parties concerned;
• empowering civil society and media to galvanize community action, generate political commitment and create a pattern of honesty in business transactions;
• improving basic education and literacy levels, and educating society to the costs of corruption.

·         Agreed that anti-corruption programmes must be supported by political will and that building private/public sector coalitions is critical to developing and sustaining reform measures.

·         The need for changing the business environment because corruption interferes with competition on the basis of price, quality, and service and erodes the integrity of managers and employees.

·         Stressed the importance of promoting ethical standards in business and good corporate governance.

·         Recognized the value of international instruments to encourage and strengthen anti-corruption programmes at national and regional levels and to provide a benchmark of best practices.

·         Encouraged donor organizations to develop synergies in programme design and implementation on the basis of long-term partnership.

Implementation strategies: Public Sector

We need to:

·         develop comprehensive national strategies for combating corruption;

·         strengthen law enforcement mechanisms, including the role of the judiciary and provide witness protection programmes;

·         increase transparency through the establishment of competitive public procurement procedures and encourage the adoption of international rules in this area;

·         improve conditions for international investment through simplification of government procedures,

·         improve transparency and accountability in budget preparation, execution, and oversight of expenditure,

·         develop codes of ethics in public administration to be enforced by strong sanctions;

·         strengthen procedures for an effective and merit-based civil service, particularly recruitment, promotion and pay,

·         adopt “Freedom of Information” laws and provide access to public information,

·         strengthen parliamentary oversight, independent audit and investigative bodies to be backed by sufficient human and financial resources.

Implementation Strategies: Private Sector

We need for:

·         establishing public-private partnerships to develop anti-corruption strategies, goals and processes;

·         promoting good corporate governance on the basis of international standards and principles;

·         strong commitment by top management of companies to implement anti-corruption strategies;

·         developing and implementing codes of ethical conduct and ensuring their effectiveness through internal control mechanisms, training of personnel and sanctions;

·         accounting and auditing rules and standards to ensure transparency in business transactions;

·         building coalitions for business integrity, including business ethics centers.

 

Implementation Strategies: Media and Civil Society

The urgency of:

• mobilizing civil society (media, NGOs, business, labor, and professional associations) to monitor good governance;
• creating an anti-corruption network of NGOs to share information on regional/country anti-corruption initiatives;
• conducting surveys of businesses, consumers and public opinion to provide feedback for delivery of public services and fostering competition;
• implementing education programmes aimed at fostering an anti-corruption culture in society;
• enabling the media to effectively exercise public scrutiny;
• improving ethical and professional standards of journalists and promoting training in investigative journalism.

Follow-Up

·         exchange information and experience on national, regional and international programmes to measure progress and encourage further actions;

·         analyze issues relating to anti-corruption activities and develop recommendations;

·         monitor the progress achieved in the implementation of these recommendations.

These are my recommendations if the body satisfy we will widely disseminated to all parties concerned with the fight against corruption.

 

- roy dante ogurida

 

The Crisis of Public Education in the Philippines

According to the human capital theory, the economic development of a nation is a function of the quality of its education. In other words: the more and better educated a people, the greater the chances of economic development.

The modern world in which we live is often termed a “knowledge society”; education and information have become production factors potentially more valuable than labor and capital. Thus, in a globalized setting, investment in human capital has become a condition for international competitiveness.

In the Philippines, I often hear harsh criticism against the politics of globalization. At the same time, regarding the labor markets, I can hardly think of another nation that is so much a part of a globalized economy than the Philippines with nearly ten per cent of the overall population working beyond the shores of the native land.

Brain drain. Apart from the much debated political, social and psychological aspects, this ongoing mass emigration constitutes an unparalleled brain drain with serious economic implications.

Arguably, the phenomenon also has an educational dimension, as the Philippine society is footing the bill for the education of millions of people, who then spend the better part of their productive years abroad. In effect, the poor Philippine educational system is indirectly subsidizing the affluent economies hosting the OFWs.

With 95 per cent of all elementary students attending public schools, the educational crisis in the Philippines is basically a crisis of public education. The wealthy can easily send their offspring to private schools, many of which offer first-class education to the privileged class of pupils.

Social divide. Still, the distinct social cleavage regarding educational opportunities remains problematic for more than one reason. Historically, in most modern societies, education has had an equalizing effect. In Germany, for instance, the educational system has helped overcome the gender gap, and later also the social divide. Today, the major challenge confronting the educational system in the country, in most cases Muslim, immigrants. Importantly, this leveling out in the context of schooling has not occurred in this part of the world. On the contrary, as one Filipino columnist wrote, “Education has become part of the institutional mechanism that divides the poor and the rich.”

Let me add an ideological note to the educational debate: Liberals are often accused of standing in the way of reforms that help overcome social inequalities. While, indeed, liberals value personal freedom higher than social equality, they actively promote equality of opportunities in two distinct policy areas: education and basic heath care.

For this reason, educational reform tends to have a high ranking on the agenda of most liberal political parties in many parts of the world.

Although I live to this country for over 30 years now, I am still astonished again and again by the frankness and directness with which people here address problems in public debates. “The quality of Philippine education has been declining continuously for roughly 25 years,” said the Undersecretary — and no one in the audience disagreed. This, I may add, is a devastating report card for the politicians who governed this nation in the said period. From a liberal and democratic angle, it is particularly depressing as this has been the period that coincides with democratic rule that was so triumphantly and impressively reinstalled after the dark years of dictatorship in 1986! Describing the quality of Philippine school education today, the senior DepEd official stated the following: “Our schools are failing to teach the competence the average citizen needs to become responsible, productive and self-fulfilling. We are graduating people who are learning less and less.”

Let me highlight two figures: Reportedly, at last count more than 17 million students are enrolled in this country’s public schools.

At an annual population growth rate of 2.3 per cent, some 1.7 million babies are born every year. In a short time, these individuals will claim their share of the limited educational provisions.

“We can’t build classrooms fast enough to accommodate” statement from a DepEd Undersecretary, who also recalled the much lamented lack of teachers, furniture and teaching materials.

In short, there are too little resources for too many students.

Two alternatives. In this situation, logically, there exist only two strategic alternatives: either, one increases the resources, which is easier said than done considering the dramatic state of public finances, or one reduces the number of students.

This second alternative presupposes a systematic population policy, aimed at reducing the number of births considerably.

But this, too, is easier said than done, considering the politics in this country — or to quote Congressman Reyes: “Given the very aggressive and active intervention of the Church addressing the population problem is very hard to tackle.”

 

-roy dante ogurida

Poverty in the Philippines

In studying economic development, I have always been aware of the gap that exists between theory and practice. Way back in my grad student days, Big Theory was the rule, Indeed, I suppose I was somewhat unusual in that I made the transition from the theoretical disciplines of political science and economics to the practical level of hands-on development work.

I have recently revisited the development literature, both for personal reasons and out of professional necessity in my current consulting work at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). And I must say that I am impressed by the breadth and logic of current development philosophies.

Let’s take a quick look at some widely accepted principles in the mainstream development community, at the three descending levels of the world as a whole, Asia as a region, and the Philippines specifically. All three share in common placing poverty reduction at the core of development work.

Global Level: In September, 2000 the UN General Assembly ended the Millennium Summit by adopting a set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In addition to the first MDG of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, the others include achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving women’s reproductive health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensuring environment sustainability, and “developing a global partnership for development.”

With specific reference to poverty, the MDGs specify three targets:

• Target 1: Halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty between 1990-2115
• Target 2: Halve the proportion of population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption and halve the proportion of underweight children (under five years)
• Target 3: Halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water or those who cannot afford it by 2115.

Asian Level: ADB’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, as embedded in its Long-Term Strategic Framework, is equally admirable. ADB identifies three fundamental pillars of poverty reduction:

• Social Development (human capital development, population policy, social capital development, gender equality, social protection);
• Good Governance (government accountability, public participation, predictable legal framework, transparency, anticorruption initiatives); and
• Pro-poor Growth (labor-intensive employment and income creation, public/private sector provision of basic services, poor area public investment. regional and subregional cooperation, environmental sustainability)

Philippines Level: The Arroyo administration’s official development agenda focuses specifically on issues of poverty and unemployment. The key document here is the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP), 2001-2004, which stresses poverty reduction through equitable growth, rural development, and social sector investment. The four primary strategies are:

• Macroeconomic stability and equitable growth, using sound fiscal and monetary policies to keep inflation low and avoid surges in unemployment; modernize all sectors through HR development and technology;
• Comprehensive HR development, basic education, health, shelter, water, electricity; safety nets for most vulnerable sectors; encouraging poor to participate in governance;
• Modernization of agricultural sector with social equity; agrarian reform, improving rural infrastructure, implementing land reform;
• Effective governance through transparency, reducing graft and corruption, strengthening partnerships with civil society and the private sector.

Poverty is conceptualized broadly, taking into account not only income but its impact in terms of human deprivation, development, and quality of life.

The Sad Statistics

During the 1990s, the Philippines made significant progress in fighting poverty. According to the Family Income and Expenditure Survey of 1997, poverty incidence fell from 49.3% of total population in 1985 to 40.6% in 1994 and 36.8% in 1997.

According to an ADB study conducted by Ernie Pernia and Arsenio Balisacan, however, the decline in poverty rates did nothing to improve the country’s notoriously inequitable income distribution. Despite the more-or-less sustained economic growth from 1985 to 1997, the poorest 20% of the population only improved their income 0.5% for every 1% growth in average income. In other words, they slipped further behind and income inequality became even more extreme.

The absolute gains were attributable to rapid economic growth during the Ramos administration, increased foreign investment, relative political stability, and decent public sector revenues associated with the privatizations introduced as part of the FVR reform agenda.

Although the Philippines escaped the Asian financial crisis in better shape than many of its neighbors, the crisis did have a significant impact, an impact exacerbated by the damage done to the agricultural sector by the El Niño phenomenon during 1997-98. Both urban and rural sectors were hard hit by rising prices and a weakened labor market, causing poverty to begin edging up again. These factors contributed to a major increase in the number of Filipinos earning less than $276 a year (considered the minimum required to meet basic living requirements here), from 27 million in 1997 to 31 million in 2000 (39.4% of the population)

Enough statistics! Let’s turn to a brief discussion of two practical areas that illustrate what we’re talking about.

Practical Illustration #1: Malnutrition and Hunger

I have been acutely aware of the relationship between poverty and hunger since my first trip here in 1982. As a statistical programmer cum development economist on a USAID-funded project based at Cornell, I came to Manila to analyze data from a national nutrition survey. The survey, conducted by the National Nutrition Council (NNC), provided the basis for targeting food and nutrition services designed for mothers and children in the most impoverished parts of the archipelago.

Although the work I did was both technologically primitive and abstract - tabulations painstakingly extracted from a Fujitsu computer using an ancient Fortran compiler and hand-drawn maps with stick-pins and annotations showing malnutrition prevalence rates - it was also a real eye-opener for me. While I had studied political and economic development at a theoretical level for years, those endeavors had been intellectualized and idealistic. In the process of analyzing that real world nutrition data, I came to appreciate the existential reality that underdevelopment and poverty are more than concepts in a book - they are directly related to starvation, illness, and human degradation.

Thus, I found it sad that when I returned here in 1998, the situation, while somewhat improved, was still not that good. When I again analyzed data on a nutrition study, this time for UNICEF, the numbers were still appalling. Still just numbers spit out by a computer, but still numbers reflecting real human suffering.

On a Philippine Nutrition Country Profile with funding from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Findings showed that, just like 20 years ago, the biggest problems are protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) and micronutrient deficiencies. Paralleling the general trend in poverty statistics, there was a decline in the prevalence of malnutrition during mid-1990s, followed by gradual increases beginning in 1998. There are now approximately 4 million (32%) preschool children who are underweight-for-age, 3 million (20%) adolescents who are underweight-for-age, and 5 million (13.2%) adults who are chronically energy deficient. Vitamin A deficiency is a serious problem, with 7% of pregnant women and 8% of infants under six months being severely deficient. Iron deficiency anemia affects 57% of infants, 51% of pregnant women, and 46% of lactating women.

The primary cause of malnutrition is the inequitable distribution of food, which is related of course to poverty. The typical Filipino diet is grossly inadequate for energy and other nutrients, causing human bodies to compensate for inadequate energy intake by utilizing protein as an energy source; the usual result is PEM. This situation is unlikely to improve as long as an estimated 28 million Filipinos are unable to buy food to meet basic nutritional requirements.

Practical Illustration #2: Failed Land Reform

Poverty in the Philippines is most acute and widespread in rural areas. Although Manila certainly has its share of urban poor, the National Capital Region has the lowest poverty incidence in the country. Nationwide, one can compare the 1997 poverty incidence rates of 21.5% in urban areas to the 50.7% rate in rural areas. The rural poor tend to be self-employed, primarily in agriculture or casual labor. They are almost all landless.

The state of “landlessness” is, of course, nothing new. The Spanish bequeathed to the Americans a colony with an extreme concentration of wealth and land, with the Spanish elites and religious orders controlling vast estates. The Americans themselves assumed title to approximately two-thirds of all arable land in the Philippines.

The American colonial administration saw land reform as crucial for political stability and economic development given the extreme poverty and unequal land distribution. The Americans were not accustomed to the colonial role, and always had a difficult time juggling their own democratic traditions with the realities of administering a colony halfway around the world. The dilemma in this case was how to uphold property rights (meaning the commercial interests of large landholder) while creating a more equitable system that would raise the standard of living of the large numbers of rural poor.

The Americans, as they did in so many other areas, relied on their own idiosyncratic historical experience. They opted for public land grants on the “homestead” model (i.e., the model used in settling Oklahoma and other areas of the American West), theoretically empowering poor peasants to become independent small-scale farmers. This was institutionalized when the American Congress passed the Public Land Act (1902), the Friar Lands Act (1903), and the Rice Share tenancy Act (1933). Each of these laws provided for land entitlements and extended the possibility of landless tenants gaining title to land.

However, in practice, American colonial efforts at land reform strongly favored the landowners, the educated, and the wealthy. Procedures such as land surveying, notice requirements, and excessive legal costs ensured that potential peasant benefactors did not gain access to land. Indeed, landholders took advantage of bureaucratic and costly procedures to not only retain their holdings but to significantly increase the size of their plantations.

Since independence in 1946, the Philippines has had four land reform programs (under Presidents Magsaysay (1955), the first Macapagal (1963), Marcos (1972), and Aquino (1987)). The latter, known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), was by far the most ambitious.

President Aquino made CARP the centerpiece for her economic development policies, capitalizing on the fact that the EDSA Constitution made owning land a constitutional right of Filipino farmers. However, implementation problems existed from the beginning, exacerbated by corrupt and incompetent management. Among the problems with CARP have been:

• An extended land valuation process
• Few and excessively vague guidelines for landowner compensation
• Extended landowner-tenant negotiations
• Lack of bureaucratic coordination
• Inconsistent implementation

Today, CARP is still alive and kicking under the auspices of the Department of Agrarian Reform. Erap made a big deal out of handing out land titles to peasants during photo ops, and President Arroyo is now doing the same. However, the bottom line is that land reform has never been effectively implemented in the Philippines. In fact, a good case can be made that efforts at land reform over the last 15 years have served only to perpetuate the cycle of rural unrest, poverty, and economic stagnation.

Realities

Poverty remains the central development issue in the Philippines and, despite the ambitious development goals laid out in the MTPDP, the country has not been able to sustain the economic growth required to reduce poverty to acceptable levels.

While I offer no solutions, I would make a few closing observations.

First, there is a fundamental disconnect between Filipino élites and the poor. The political leadership in the Philippines has always been drawn from those élites, and those politicians have traditionally played the role of patrons and benefactors, relying on the pork barrel and personal/family funds (often acquired through corruption) to essentially buy votes. The core principle of democracy - that representatives should be drawn from those they represent and advocate for the true interests of their constituents - has not been operative.

Philippine Presidents in particular have been drawn from the ranks of the wealthy and privileged. How can they relate to what it means to be poor or hungry? Even if their heart’s in the right place (which is not all that common), well-photographed visits to squatter settlements are not the answer.

Second, the Philippines system is exceedingly politicized. President Arroyo herself is already focused on the 2004 presidential elections. In a sense, you can’t blame GMA. Her predecessor, Erap, had a built-in constituency among the masa. But President Arroyo must create such a base, given that she is the daughter of a previous President and has virtually nothing in common with the poor people of her country. She has worked hard to develop support among the common folk, dressed in jeans with regularity, and sung on stage with popular recording artists.

She has also latched onto fighting poverty as a key policy emphasis. In her State-of-the-Nation (SONA) address on July 22nd, she emphasized the so-called “rolling stores” - trucks loaded with subsidized rice, rice, sugar, and canned meat that ply the streets of Manila - as a sterling example of her administration’s anti-poverty programs. The only problem was that her remarks had knowledgeable economists practically rolling in the aisles, given that few poor people ever get access to the trucks and only 5% of the nation’s poor live in Metro Manila. But real poverty alleviation programs where they are most needed - say in rural Mindanao - would lack the publicity opportunities of the rolling stores on Manila streets.

True anti-poverty programs take a long time to bear fruit, and the politically-driven nature of Philippine government sector programs almost ensures that the emphasis will continue to be on quick fixes or interventions that provide high visibility and political payoffs.

This is unfortunate given the seriousness of the situation and the implications for the country if concerted action is not taken.

Poverty and malnutrition are already at alarming levels in this country, and the country’s too-rapid population growth is magnifying the strain on limited budgetary resources. The rapidly growing population is jeopardizing the quality of basic social services, contributing to the ongoing decline in quality of basic education, and limiting access to health care (especially primary health care, reproductive health/family planning, immunization, and feeding programs).

Achieving any significant reduction in poverty will require rapid economic growth, growth of a magnitude not seen in recent years. Further, addressing issues of inequality will require significant investments in human capital, especially in improving the quantity and quality of primary education.

Most importantly, implementing effective anti-poverty programs based on the quite valid model laid out in the MTPDP will require strong political leadership and a previously unobserved commitment to truly representing the interests of the poor. Whether such leadership will be forthcoming is, I suppose, the $1,000,000.00 question.

 

- roy dante ogurida

 

 

What Is A Synopsis?

A synopsis is primarily a condensation, an outline or a short presentation of an article, of an essay or of a book.

A synopsis is not a list of opinions, or an examination of the feelings and/or conscious states, e.g. likes, dislikes, preferences, annoyances, etc., of the writer of the synopsis.

If the writer wants to addend his or her reactions, he or she must take care to explain all the relevant points in the original article reacted to.

What Should A Synopsis Look Like?

Part A: The Body of the Synopsis — the minimal conditions

1. First indicate a concern of the author, or a point argued by the author. A complex article will have more than one of these but treat them one by one.

2. What secondary points does the author make to establish the importance of his or her concern, or to reach the conclusion of his or her argument?

3. What reasons does the author give for these secondary points?

4. Answer questions 1, 2, and 3 for each important item in the article.

Part B: Reaction and Evaluation - This is ALWAYS secondary!

1. Your personal judgments must be directed only at items brought up in Part A.

2. Give reasons for your judgments. These can be the citation of counterevidence, concerns about the consequences of the points made by the author, or similar things. These reasons are never just your feelings. Your responsibility as a scholar is to give the reader of your synopsis — assumed to be someone other than a close friend of yours — good reasons for agreeing with your evaluations.