[Statement] KATRIBU Indigenous Peoples’ Partylist strongly opposes the privatization of 26 public hospitals in the country

KATRIBU Indigenous Peoples’ Partylist strongly opposes the privatization of 26 public hospitals in the country The privatization of public hospitals deprives the marginalized sectors especially indigenous peoples from receiving quality and free health services. Indigenous peoples not only in the Cordillera Region are in fact already deprived of basic health services. There are no community…

Human Rights Online Philippines

August 14, 2012

2–4 minutes

environment, Ethnicity, Facilities, Health, Human Rights, Indigenous People, International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, Medicine, philippines, South America, Uniform Resource Locator, United Nations, URL

KATRIBU Indigenous Peoples’ Partylist strongly opposes the privatization of 26 public hospitals in the country

The privatization of public hospitals deprives the marginalized sectors especially indigenous peoples from receiving quality and free health services. Indigenous peoples not only in the Cordillera Region are in fact already deprived of basic health services. There are no community health centers in most of indigenous communities. If there are, either it lack medicines but without regular doctor or health personnel.

While there is an absence of disaggregated data on indigenous peoples – both public and private surveys indicate that IPs have the highest infant mortality rate, maternal death rate and malnutrition, that can be attributed to lack of medical services. Indigenous people are usually deprived of basic needs and necessities in life especially in health care. In fact majority of them suffer from different diseases and die without having seen a health care provider.

The absence of doctors or medical personnel force them to travel to the cities and towns far from their communities, where public hospitals are found in order to attain medical attention. In some cases, patients die upon reaching medical attention in hospitals.

Furthermore, there is also a high percentage of indigenous people who are not members of PhilHealth, in which they have difficulty in receiving proper medications and paying hospital bills. Other restraints faced by Indigenous people are the payment policies imposed by government hospitals in admitting patients. With the high number of indigenous people who are impoverished and jobless, their financial ordeal would be at the greatest just to cope with their patients medication. Discrimination against Indigenous pople also aggrevates this situation.

The lack or absence of health services is worsened by militarization and vilification of indigenous communities. There is a widespread fear of indigenous communities from being branded as terrorist groups.

In some cases, indigenous people who can not afford proper medical attention rely on the medicines that are available which maybe inappropriate medications to their illness. Others still rely on traditional herbal medicines which sometimes are insufficient or cause more dire complications to their illness.

Privatization and transforming public hospitals into corporations does not answer the growing need of a quality and free health services in the country. Privatization is not the answer. We urge the government should increase the budget in health services and decrease budget for military counter-insurgency. The government should prioritize health services to far-flung communities where it is most needed.

SAMUEL ANONGOS
Sposkeperson – Coordinator
KATRIBU – Cordillera

All submissions are republished and redistributed in the same way that it was originally published online and sent to us. We may edit submission in a way that does not alter or change the original material.

Human Rights Online Philippines does not hold copyright over these materials. Author/s and original source/s of information are retained including the URL contained within the tagline and byline of the articles, news information, photos etc.