As a response to the dire health situation of our people, various organizations from the Philippines and the USA pitched time, skills, resources, and common love for country to conduct a two-day medical and dental mission in Brgy. Poblacion, Balbalan, Kalinga on April 18 to 19, 2023. The mission rendered much-needed health services to about five hundred (500) adults and children from the different barangays of this upland Cordillera municipality.

With preparations that began in the last quarter of 2022 including close coordination and constant communication with the Kalinga Provincial Health Office headed by Dr. Edward Tandingan, Balbalan Municipal Health Office headed by Dr. Esther Roselle Calma, and Mayor Almar Malannag with Vice Mayor Rowina Alison Damian of the Local Government Unit of Balbalan, non-government organizations composed of the Community Health Education, Services and Training in the Cordillera Region (CHESTCORE), Council for Health and Development (CHD), Filipino Nurses United (FNU), and USA-based Fostering Aide Thru Health Workers Alliance (FAHWA)* in cooperation with Timpuyog dagiti Mannalon ti Kalinga (TMK) (Association of Farmers in Kalinga) provided free medical consultations, dental services, minor surgery procedures, respiratory therapy consultations, acupuncture treatments, and medicines. 

As a true doctor of the people, Dr. Chandu Claver, former president of the Kalinga Medical Society and provincial lead of CHEK-A (Community Health Education in Kalinga Apayao), a community-based health program in Kalinga and Apayao, also joined the mission in solidarity with the Kalinga people’s aspiration for better social and health conditions.

Doctors, nurses, dentists, a respiratory therapist, community health workers, and health personnel from the Rural Health Unit and Western Kalinga District Hospital were able to serve patients from Barangays Mabaca, Poswoy, Pantikian, Gawaan, Talalang, Balbalan Proper/Poblacion, and Balantoy. From where the mission was held, some of these barangays take hours (or even a day’s walk) to reach. Not all of Balbalan’s villages are accessible to vehicles and may only be reached by walking. It was why some of the patients travelled a day before (and some before dawn) just to see a health professional and receive medicines at no cost. 

While Balbalan is richly endowed with vast natural and mineral resources (both metallic and non-metallic), it is a third-class municipality with a poverty incidence of 16% in 2018. Many die without seeing a health provider. In January 2023, eighty-six percent of deaths in Kalinga were not medically attended. 

Because of poverty, many patients had to wait for years to finally have their mass removed by a surgeon. Poverty was also visible in the teeth of dental patients whose decays were proof that dental services were too expensive. Respiratory problems and other medical issues were otherwise curable and preventable had the people’s access to health been better and more health workers were available to provide health education and medical attention. 

As a way of expressing their gratitude, the barangay officials, Salegseg community, and members of the people’s organization held a cultural night for the visiting organizations where everyone danced to the gongs and listened to a moving uggayam (Cordillera indigenous chant performed in public gatherings or occasions where the lyrics are spontaneous) performed by one of the community elders. In response, FAHWA’s Chito Quijano expressed the groups’ admiration to the i-Balbalan and the importance of strengthening solidarity among the people to overcome any challenges.

In the long term, ensuring that the right to health is achieved by every Filipino would require the government to rekindle its primary obligation to people’s health as enshrined in the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and other international covenants where the Philippines is a signatory. A collective campaign must be relentlessly pursued for a free, comprehensive and progressive health care system that will ensure that health ceases to be a privilege but a human right of every Filipino. 

—

*Original name Filipino-American Health Workers Association (FAHWA)

Sources:

http://rssocar.psa.gov.ph/kalinga

https://psa.gov.ph/content/psa-releases-2018-municipal-and-city-level-poverty-estimates

http://rssocar.psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/CAR_CR08_JAN_INFOGRAPHICS_001.png