LGUs urged to enact reproductive health measures
By Lilita Balane, Newsbreak | 07/08/2009 11:06 PM
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MANILA - Local governments should come up with their own reproductive health policies to address the growing number of mothers dying from pregnancy-related complications, because the national government is obviously not keen on doing something about it.
Aurora Governor Bellaflor Angara-Castillo, a former congresswoman, on Wednesday called on local officials that it’s their constituents who are suffering while Congress sits on the reproductive health (RH) bill.
She said it is now time for the local government units (LGUs) to enact ordinances that would take the place of a national RH law.
Among the LGUs that have passed ordinances on reproductive health programs are the provinces of Aurora, Isabela, Ifugao, and Sulu. Olongapo City and Quezon City have their RH ordinances in place, while Makati City is drafting its own.
“If we are waiting for something from the national level, let’s not waste our time. Let’s go to the local level,” Castillo said at a policy forum on the RH bill organized by the Philippine Legislators' Committee on Population and Development Foundation.
No Change
Castillo authored an RH bill in 2002 when she was a congresswoman. She noted that Congress’s resistance to pass a law that would put in place a national RH policy has not changed after seven years.
She said lawmakers were supportive of the bill at the beginning, but when the Roman Catholic Church expressed strong opposition to the measure, the lawmakers changed their minds.
The current proposal in Congress, House Bill 5043, promotes reproductive health and responsible parenthood through a range of programs that include information and access to both natural and artificial family planning methods. The Roman Catholic Church and pro-life groups, as well as legislators who are against the bill, claim that the bill legalizes abortion and that some of the artificial contraceptives methods indicate there are not safe.
According to health department statistics, pregnancy-related deaths rose from an average of 1,783 in 2004 to 3,500 in 2008.
Local Funds
Aurora province, where Castillo is governor, was the first province that successfully passed a reproductive health program. The ordinance is the same as HB 5043 because it makes available artificial contraceptives, conducts training and seminars to local health workers, and does an RH education campaign among the youth.
Castillo said that it’s easier to convince her constituents on the intent of the bill since they experience the adverse effects of uncontrolled population, among them worsening poverty, maternal mortality, and infant deaths.
Since it put in place an RH program, Aurora saw a decrease in population growth rate from 2.39 percent to 1.07 percent.
Castillo said that funding for Aurora’s RH program comes from the provincial government’s budget.
“Aurora allotted half-a-million budget for the first year of the ordinance. Then the next year we added P350,000, then a year after we made it P1.2 million. I also give P1 million for every municipality for the RH program,” she said.
USAID Should Help
She said the provincial government increased its RH budget in 2006 after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) withdrew its funding from the family planning program of the Department of Health (DOH).
According to Castillo, the USAID stopped supporting the population control program of the DOH when it realized that the national government was not responding to the need for a more comprehensive measure to address the country’s growing population.
“I hope that the USAID will look back on LGUs that already have RH ordinances or even those with pending ones. If the national government is not serious, the local level is. And they can instead assist the LGUs,” she added.
Without the national government’s support, Castillo said, LGUs with RH ordinance suffer from dearth of funding, since budget that could go to livelihood projects is sometimes re-aligned to the RH program. (Newsbreak)
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