Grim statistics on Filipino way

Do we Filipinos care about our kind and ourselves? Mull over these statistics, and form your own conclusion:

• The Philippines is second only to Sudan in the number of internal refugees. Last year 600,000 Christians and Muslims fled fighting between government troops and Mindanao separatists, according to a UN-backed report. Most refugee camp dwellers are women and children. The Moro secessionism has been going on for four decades, with fighters acquiring more and more sophisticated arms. This is in spite of supposed tight border security by the military, whose budget perennially competes with that for education and feeding programs.

• Filipinos are the most trafficked women and children across international borders, the Reader’s Digest reported in October 2010. Of 800,000 worldwide victims of human trafficking every year, 500,000 are Filipinos, mostly to Japan, the Middle East and America. Presumably a bigger number are trafficked domestically as housemaids.

• Less Filipinos work in manufacturing than in the sex trade. There are 1,000,000 prostituted Filipinos, not only adult women but also, nearly half, minors. They are in brothels, bars and massage parlors. Surveys of prostituted masseuses indicate that 34 percent work to support poor parents, 8 percent to support siblings, and 28 percent to support husbands or boyfriends. More than 20 percent said the job paid well, but only 2 percent claimed it was easy work and only 2 percent enjoy it.

• One of every four Filipino families are hungry. While the percentage has decreased dramatically since the 1980s and 1990s, the volumes have not. That’s according to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute. With a present population of nearly 100 million, Filipinos who are starving number about 25 million.

• One-tenth of the population, nearly 10 million Filipinos, are working overseas. For every batch of 200 high-school grads partying in homecoming, 20 would be absent because tied up abroad. Most are in America, the Middle East, and nearby Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. A good number are in jobs beneath their education and training. Most Filipino overseas workers say they do it to buy the best education for their children. Yet, statistics show that one of every five OFW college kids drop out because of non-parental guidance or broken homes.

• About 2.8 million Filipinos are drug-addicted. For every family reunion of 40 aunts, uncles and cousins, one of them is bound to be hooked on, most commonly, shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride). Most are from low-income families. Yet the number of government drug rehab centers has not grown from the present seven, where the cost of treatment is about P5,000 a month. In private rehab clinics the charge per patient is upwards of P50,000 a month.

• The top 10 causes of death in the Philippines, by numbers, are heart attack, stroke, cancer, accidents and disasters (land and sea, fires and floods), pneumonia, tuberculosis, nonspecific symptoms and abnormal clinical findings, chronic lower respiratory diseases (bronchitis, emphysema, asthma, etc.), diabetes, and grave perinatal (infant) conditions. Most of the ailing and fatalities are poor folk who live in destitute, unsanitary conditions and get scant medical attention. Ironically, Filipino doctors and nurses are aching to leave for greener pastures abroad.

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BLAST FROM THE PAST. Check out this item on PubMed.gov of the US National Library of Medicine (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2690293):

“Richard Pearson Strong and the iatrogenic plague disaster in Bilibid Prison, Manila, 1906,” by Chernin E., Department of Tropical Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston

“In November 1906, Richard Pearson Strong, then head of the Philippine Biological Laboratory, inoculated 24 men — inmates of Manila’s Bilibid Prison — with a cholera vaccine that somehow had been contaminated with plague organisms; 13 men died. The governor-general of the Philippines appointed a general committee to investigate the affair, and the US Senate demanded information about the episode. Although the Senate, the secretary of war, and even the president were kept informed of developments, no mainland investigations ensued. The general committee concluded that Strong was negligent for not having locks on his incubators and for leaving a visiting physician alone in the laboratory, where he might have mixed up the cholera and plague cultures on the fateful day. The committee’s charge was referred to the attorney general, who found Strong innocent of criminal negligence, whereupon the governor-general exonerated Strong. Strong was despondent over Bilibid but recovered and developed a noteworthy career in American tropical medicine. In retrospect, the disaster at Bilibid presents an epitome of the problems surrounding the use of prisoner-subjects without authorization and without their voluntary consent. Far ahead of its time, the general committee recognized and condemned the shortcomings and urged reform, pleas the government ignored. The Bilibid episode remains, however, as a cautionary tale for those engaged in clinical research.”

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 “Some people cannot live to the full, without emptying the lives of others.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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