Values reformation remains to be the key to stem the country’s worsening problem on Human Immuno Virus-Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV-AIDS), Mayor Mauricio Domogan stressed on Monday.
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“The HIV-AIDS problem should be taken seriously and the most important way to stop it is for all of us to reform our personal values, attitudes and discipline ourselves (by abstaining from indiscriminate sex),” the mayor said during the program marking the HIV-AIDS Awareness Month celebration which coincided with the flag-raising rites at city hall.
“Let the increase in AIDS cases serve as warning to all of us. We know the consequences of the disease so let us help ourselves and avoid getting into that situation,” the mayor said.
During the program, city health office officer-in-charge Dr. Rowena Galpo and Department of Health Cordillera regional director Myrna Cabotaje bared that while the number of new HIV cases in the country decreased, the number of cases in the Philippines continued to increase in staggering levels.
The country is presently turning in an alarming average of six to eight new cases per day.
In the city, the number of cases hiked to an average of four to five cases per year since 2007 and for the last two years (2010 and 2011), the city posted six new cases consecutively.
“Because of the magnitude of the problem, we do not have the luxury of complacency now,” warned Galpo.
Galpo said the city health office in coordination with the DOH-CAR and the AIDS Watch Council headed by Dr. Charles Cheng beefed up existing programs designed to counter the disease this time employing a multi-sectoral approach.
The programs consist of surveillance, referral, counselling, and livelihood aspects anchored on an enhanced partnership between the public and the private sectors.
Dr. Cabotaje said they have included the city health office and the Baguio General Hospital as part of the Regional AIDS Assistance Team (RAAT) to give more focus on the campaign.
She said the campaign aims to have, “zero new case, zero new AIDS-related death and zero discrimination,” against HIV-AIDS patients.
Cheng, for his part, emphasized the need to sustain a vigorous information dissemination to combat the disease citing the efforts of the city health office in launching the website “Bonjing,” an electronic inquiry on sexual and reproductive health needs of young people which was conceptualized by Dr. Celia Flor Brillantes.
The city’s HIV-AIDS awareness campaign was boosted with the award of a P50,000 incentive for its emerging local Cataclytic HIV-AIDS Mitigating Program (CHAMP).
The incentive came from the Department of Interior and Local Government Local Government Academy and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to help the city sustain its programs for HIV-AIDS prevention. - (PIA / by Aileen Refuerzo)
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