EDITORIAL - Fireworks over firecrackers

Feeling all fired up, pyrotechnics manufacturers blasted the Department of Health for the supposedly counter-productive and misplaced strategies it is employing in its "Iwas Paputok" or anti-firecracker campaign.

"Go fight dengue and rabies," the firecracker makers told the DOH, apparently realizing that there are more people who either get killed or get sick by dengue or rabies per year than by firecrackers.

Besides, Philippine Pyrotechnics Manufacturers and Dealers Association president Celso Cruz said, the law only regulates the manufacture, distribution, sale and use of firecrackers, not ban them. But the way DOH is pushing its initiative, it is as if firecrackers are banned.

Of course it has to be presumed that the DOH is acting with regularity. It has to be presumed that the health department only has the best of intentions in mind. It is foolish to believe a hidden agenda is pushing it to act aggressively against firecracker accidents.

But there is a point in the objections to the aggressiveness of the campaign, and it is that the DOH is not the police, or some law enforcement agency tasked to make sure that the law regulating pyrotechnics is properly enforced.

While there is no stopping the DOH from participating in any activity that has anything to do with the protection and promotion of public health and well-being, there are activities that are, indeed, best left to agencies better equipped to handle them.

Perhaps the pyrotechnics manufacturers are bristling over the fact that in clearly health-related concerns like dengue and rabies, the DOH, rightly or wrongly, has been perceived to have fallen short of achieving a successful campaign.

For our part, we believe that it is right for the DOH to be aggressive in its campaign, not to stop people, especially children, from exploding firecrackers but for them to exercise prudence and care in doing so. There is no harm in making people aware of certain dangers.

 At the same time, however, the DOH must indeed display greater aggressiveness, and at least show some dramatic results, in its campaigns against the dread diseases that, time and again, seem to threaten Filipinos with impunity.