Media Release
Today is the 71st annual celebration of World Health Day. The Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) joins the call for a people-centered and public health-oriented pandemic response.
Despite the Palace’s attempts to obscure our situation and to show decisiveness with yet another harsh lockdown to curb infections, the truth is we are lagging and failing even compared to our neighboring countries.
After one year, the government is still obsessed with repression and population control while people across all walks of life, especially among the poor and middle class, are dying everyday from the absence of effective public health care.
An enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) was imposed again as an absurd substitute for the rational testing, contact tracing, quarantine and isolation that is so badly needed. On top of that, expedient mass vaccination is turning out to be impossible with Malacanang, the IATF and relevant government agencies all in disarray.
Meanwhile, tens of billions of pesos in taxpayers’ money are being poured into pointless agencies like the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) which uses this to vilify and violently attack activists, development workers, and human rights advocates. All this while our hospitals are so underfunded that they cannot take any more patients or even compensate medical frontliners properly.
CPDG stands in solidarity with all health workers tirelessly serving the people since day one. Their appeal for increased and timely benefits and allowances for their unmatched sacrifice must be heeded.
“The COVID-19 crisis is no longer just a health crisis but a political crisis. Civil society organizations, grassroots groups and alliances, and the people must unite and call for free mass testing, proper contact tracing, rational and convenient quarantines, and free medical care for all COVID-19 patients in isolation” points out Liza Maza, CPDG spokesperson.
“A real public health-oriented response is needed to fight the pandemic and to even begin to overcome the crippling poverty that it has worsened”, reiterates Maza. #
(Featured photo from JL Javier of CNN Philippines)