BusinessWorld
May 14, 2021 | 12:33 am
By
Reporters
IT TOOK Nikko Lae D. Abdon, 30, nearly a week to find medicines for her 66-year-old uncle, who got admitted in an intensive care unit room at the San Lazaro Hospital in the Philippine capital.
The drug tocilizumab, which is mainly used to treat arthritis, worked wonders to alleviate his pain after he was diagnosed with a severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Doctors also gave him remdesivir, an anti-viral drug originally made to treat hepatitis C.
âWe were grateful that the doctors were able to save him,â Ms. Abdon, who works as a nurse at the hospital, said in mixed English and Filipino by telephone. âI didnât like how we really struggled to find the medicines.â
Published May 6, 2021, 8:00 AM
The domestic pharmaceutical and healthcare industry has been forecasted to rebound this year with a 5-6 percent growth from a negative 11 percent in 2020, but initial results are not actually looking good, according to a top industry leader.
Dr. Beaver Tamesis, president of the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP) said at the Wednesday Roundtable at Lido the P270-billion industry was initially projected to grow 5-6 percent this year.
Photo credit: https://www.phap.org.ph/uhc/
“Given the pandemic, the initial forecast last year for 2021 is we may return to some growth of 5 to 6 percent,” he said. But Tamesis said that the way things are going on, “It’s not looking very good. We had to go into lockdown again, limited patients admitted to hospitals and capacity at 40 percent. Still a touch and go for the rest of the year,” he said.
By HANA BORDEY, GMA News
Published May 5, 2021 7:43pm The government must work on ensuring the traceability of COVID-19 vaccines to avoid the entry or distribution of counterfeit jabs, a global standards expert said Wednesday. In a roundtable discussion Wednesday, GS1 Philippines chairman Jesus Varela warned that once the COVID-19 vaccines are commercially available, counterfeits and substandard jabs will flood the market. Varela mentioned a previous Food and Drug Administration memorandum circular which requires product information such as product identification number, barcode, distributor and manufacturer information. He said that the memorandum was suspended by the FDA. “Sa amin napakaimportante na ito ay maituloy dahil ito naga-identify ng produkto para madaling ma-trace [For us, it is very important to continue this memorandum because we can identify the products and we can easily trace this]. One of the solutions in checking counterfeits is the traceability of
Herd immunity vs COVID-19
By Teodoro B. Padilla
Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that occurs when a high percentage of the population becomes immune, either through vaccination or previous infection. Also known as population immunity or community immunity, herd immunity makes the spread of an infectious disease from person to person unlikely.
When herd immunity is achieved, even individuals not vaccinated (such as newborns and the immunocompromised) are offered some protection because the disease has little opportunity to spread within the community, according to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
Last year, some groups floated the idea of allowing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection to spread through whole populations in order to achieve herd immunity quickly. Health authorities, including the World Health Organization (WHO), vehemently oppose this approach to achieving herd immunity.
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PHILSTAR
Wearing masks and face shields and social distancing help reduce our risk of being exposed to the virus or spreading it to others. However, these measures alone will not be enough. We need to get vaccinated. Vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will train our immune system so it will be ready to fight the virus if we were exposed to it. (See “Benefits of Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated April 12, 2021.)
This year’s theme for World Immunization Week (WIW) “Vaccines Bring Us Closer” has never been truer than today. WIW is celebrated every last week of April to promote vaccination as a means to help protect people of all ages against vaccine-preventable diseases. While immunization is known as one of the world’s most successful health interventions, nearly 20 million children globally are not getting their vaccines while many adolescents, adults, and elderly miss ou