Flavier's journey from barrio to senado

Characteristically, Johnny Flavier is a consummate raconteur as he talks about his life and times in his autobiography from barrio to senado. In the grades, he became aware of his talent in making people laugh, read voraciously and romped off with top class honors and oratorical prizes. His father was a skilled machinist at the American-operated Balatoc Mines in Baguio, and his mother was the original ukay ukay queen who collected and mended and sold clothes; with their small income they brought up their four children respecting the value of work, diligence, and frugality. The youngest child, who was called Juanito for his diminutive size, was able to finish the medical course at the University of the Philippines, and from there embarked on a career journey, first as a doctor to the barrios in Gapan, Nueva Ecija, with the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) which he would later head as president, to president of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), to Secretary of Health, then as a member of the Philippine Senate. He is the local boy who made more than good.

After graduation, instead of leaving for the United States like his classmates, he decided to join the legendary Dr. James Yen, who had founded PRRM in 1952, which, within two decades, became the biggest and most stable non-government organization in the Philippines.

At PRRM, tenets followed were: Go to the people, Live among them, and Learn from them. These Johnny learned by heart, and practiced skillfully. He went out to the barrios, ate and slept (siesta) with the farmers, learned practical lessons from them. Later, he would publish his experiences in best-selling books — with bone-tickling jokes - titled Doctor to the Barrios.

He learned to plant rice and harvest corn, tasted linupak na saging, dog and carabao meat, bayawak (monitor lizard) and snake. He saw a carabao give birth. The first time he tried to discuss population management and family planning with barrio women, they almost laughed him off the stage.

He appreciated the practical wisdom of the rural folk. One could predict with precision the weather, and tell time without benefit of a watch.

He was loved by the barrio folk - a doctor who cared, and cared to know what they ate, planted, dreamed. 

The rural folk learned new things from the doctor whose team taught them not only to use, but build, water-sealed toilets (they had preferred using behind the bushes toilets). One farmer, in appreciation, engraved the doctor’s name on his bowl and told him, “Every morning, doctor, when I look down, I think of you.”

Far from the city and without modern amenities, Iohnny was taught by the locals to use a banana trunk in the absence of ice packs to cool down a patient’s fever. He learned, along with other PRRM staff, that bamboo scalpels could be used to cut babies’ umbilical cords, but, to reduce the high incidence of neonatal tetanus, they convinced the albularyos (with whom they consulted to learn their health secrets) to sterilize them in boiling water. He and the men created an “ambulance” out of bamboo sleds pulled by a carabao.

There were fearsome times for the doctor and his family, too. He once was threatened by the unwelcoming look of members of the Hukbalahap when he had to drive his Beetle in the dead of night. There were low moments as when patients died, but the barrio folk took these as being God’s will. A most dreaded time was when disgruntled PRRM employees threatened to harm Johnny and his family, but his local friends provided a protective shield around them. A priest was reported to have associated his advocacy of family planning with “evil,” but this incident did not alarm him.

He did not know that decades later, when he would be appointed Secretary of Health, he would be viciously attacked by Catholic bishops for his position on family planning.

He met members of the Hukbalahap (in Nueva Ecija, which was then the hotbed of insurgency), who became friendly with him for his treating their sick relatives. He and his family were protected by the barrio folk when they were threatened by striking workers displeased with management policies.

He was happy over at IIRR to which he had been promoted by Dr. Yen who liked Johnny’s style and charisma, when President Fidel Ramos appointed him as Health Secretary. But how could he say no to the President? Doing the best he could, he launched Oplan Alis Disease: Ceasefire for Children, intended to strike a major blow against polio, pertusis, diphtheria, tetanus, and measles as well as distributing Vitamin A supplements to children. He called on movie stars and other personalities to help support the program. By 1998, polio had been eradicated, and on Oct. 20, 2003, the World Health Organization Western Pacific Region declared the Philippines officially polio free.

He had a head-on collision with the bishops and priests on the issue of condom use to prevent HIV. Flavier was attacked by the Church. But in the end, Flavier writes in his autobiography, thanks to the lobby against the product, people became aware of AIDS, and condom manufacturers “went from being purveyors of perversity to being potential lifesavers. Their sales improved by leaps and bounds.”

With Johnny’s popularity zoomed boundlessly, President Ramos asked him to join the administration’s senatorial slate. The Chief Executive pointed out that his population program, anti-smoking campaign, National Immunization Day, food fortification project, would become institutionalized in Congress. He reluctantly agreed, and spiced up his campaign with the slogan, “Let’s DOH it!” and “Mr. DOH.”

Priests denounced him from the pulpits as an “abortionist,” and “agent of the devil,” who should not be voted to the Senate. But Johnny firmly placed fifth among the senatorial candidates; he had been voted by 11 million Filipinos.

There were calls for him later to run for president. But he put his foot down.

Now retired from politics, he is living in peace and quiet with Susan, whose business acumen enabled the family to legally purchase real estate properties, and has time for his grandchildren. He is not as poor as surveys had shown him as the poorest among Cabinet members and senators. His experience with living with and helping the poor makes him ever so rich. Once when his medicine class got together, they to a man, voiced out that given the choice, they would have lived the happy, simple and effective life of their classmate Johnny Flavier.

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