- JUNK WTO

Published Sunday, December 04, 2005 by JUNK WTO! | E-mail this post

RESIST! JunkWTO!

News Release

December 3, 2005

Ref: Ina Alleco Silverio (09228123634),

Tonyo Cruz (09178928277) email at resist_wto@yahoo.com

RP's worsening health problems due to poisonous

WTO health sector restructuring prescriptions

ResiST WTO spokesperson and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) chairperson Dr. Carol Pagaduan-Araullo today blamed the worsening state of the Philippine public health care system on the Philippine government' implementation of a health restructuring program structured after the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund's globalization agenda.

"The Philippine government has s taken up privatization as part of its duties to fulfill international agreements. It has signed and entered into multilateral and bilateral agreements requiring local markets to be opened up to foreign capital and businesses, including the socially sensitive public health care system," she explained.

According to Araullo, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) under the WTO agreements, which the government acceded to in 1994, include what is called Mode 3 (one of the four "Modes"), which opens the country to "services provided through the presence of service providing entities of one party in the territory of any other". "One party" refers to the other countries part of the WTO. For health care, this mainly refers to the technologically advanced and highly capitalized private health corporations of first-world countries that are, in contrast to the practice of our government, hired by their governments in their public hospitals to provide free and comprehensive health care to their citizens.

"In the Philippines, the WTO's policy dictates are translated into the government's onstream program for the streamlining of the public health sector, under the Health Sector Reform Agenda, especially under Executive Order 366 to be implemented by the end of this year. Under this, among other disastrous effects, more than 1,000 health workers will be rendered "redundant" and lose their jobs. The 16 existing centers for health development will be reduced to fivea move that can affect the centers’ close to 4,700 employees; and the worst among them, is that public health sector services that directly compete with those of the private sector will be "scaled down, phased out, or abolished". Such a move will make health services even less accessible to the poor and marginalized," she said.

"The budget for health has consistently been miniscule and scandalously small in comparison with annually increasing defense budgets. The lack of provision for health services from the barangay health centers up to the national government hospitals has already reached a critical level. This situation is further aggravated by the exodus for overseas employment, as nurses mostly, of health professionals, which has aggravated the already serious under-staffing of Philippine public hospitals, from the regional to the national levels," she said.

The Resist WTO spokesperson said that consistent with the common principles of the Health Sector Reform Agenda and of privatization, government hospitals now operate as moneymaking institutions, generating their revenues for their own operations.

"This is used as a reason for the national government to reduce the budget allocations to government hospitals every yea r. Specifically, allocations for maintenance and other operating expenses decrease by 20% per year, which results in health institutions charging even more for previously free-of-charge services," she pointed out.

"The national government has been consistent in offloading its responsibility to provide health services to the people. As it is, the government already fails to provide sufficient budget allocations for health services, support for health institutions and the local pharmaceutical industry, and fair and commensurate wages for health workers. But it makes matters worse by ascribing to and by actively pursuing the privatization of public health services."

According to Araullo, for the Philippine govenrment to fulfill the privatization provisions of the Health Sector Reform Agenda as part of the recommendations of the IMF and the WTO, part of the services of the Lung Center of the Philippines will be discontinued, even as cutb acks in the budgets of other government hospitals which the poor still have access to such as the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), the Philippine Heart Center and other regional and provincial hospitals are being made.

"What is even worse than simple privatization is its integration with the re-orientation of the country’s health services towards health tourism, where the majority of Filipinos will not only not be able to afford health services, but will be placed second priority to foreigners who avail of such services. Under this program, the services of the Philippine Heart Center, National Kidney and Transplant Institute, East Avenue Medical Center, and the Fabella will be integrated towards the objective of health tourism, further commercializing health care and placing it beyond the reach of the majority of poor and marginalized Filipinos," she said.

"The privatization of the public health care system literally al lows the majority of Filipino citizens to get sick and die, unattended by their own government. By prioritizing the privatization of the public health care system, in fulfilling its responsibilities to international trade bodies like the World Trade Organization, the government, as evidenced by the Health Sector Reform Agenda, has as its policy to abandon its own people," she concluded.#

Home

About Us

We say "Junk WTO!" and we unite with everyone who opposes the WTO for various reasons. We encourage you to participate in the People's Action Week spearheaded by the HK Peoples' Alliance on WTO (HKPA) of which we are a part. We hope that this blog continues even after MC6 in Hong Kong.