WONDER drugs and modern equipment now available in the country can save more lives if the public is more aware of preventive screening.
While cancer is now treatable due to modern medicines including target therapy, prevention is lacking because many Filipino women do not have access to preventive screening for breast and cervical cancer.
Valerie Ulep, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), said in a study that “breast and cervical cancer screening is extremely low in the Philippines compared to upper-middle and high-income countries.”
To intensify cancer screening, advocates like Cancer Coalition and Citizen’s Watch are pressing Congress to increase its roughly P1-billion annual budget for the Department of Health’s anti-cancer program.
Prevention is best but in case illness has set in, the budget can help only 200 patients who need to go through 18 cycles of targeted therapy or chemotherapy, which costs around P450,000 per patient.
Data shows around 27,000 new breast cancer incidences are reported each year in the country, with 9,000 of previously registered patients dying.
Cancer’s overall economic burden is costing the Philippines P35.3 billion each year in actual medical cost, wasted opportunity and foregone productivity, Ulep said in the PIDS study.
Money wasted, however, could have been put to better use thus preventing more cancer deaths, according to another study.
