Rep. Ralph Recto (PNA file photo)
MANILA – The line-item insertion of PHP1.56 billion for two cancer funds under this year’s General Appropriations Act (GAA) will aid millions of Filipinos who suffer from various kinds of cancer.
Deputy Speaker and Batangas (6th District) Rep. Ralph Recto said in a statement Sunday that it was “the result of multi-partisan, bicameral push."
Of the PHP 1.56 billion insertions, PHP1.054 billion will be for cancer prevention, detection, treatment and care, as mentioned in Republic Act 11215, the National Integrated Cancer Control Act.
It would specifically go to the procurement and delivery of cancer, supportive care and palliative care medicines covering the eight treatable cancer types.
Meanwhile, the remaining PHP500 million under the Cancer Assistance Fund will be used for cancer prevention, detection treatment, diagnostics, and care for eight priority cancer types.
The assistance pool that cancer patients could tap is bigger than the two program’s combined P1.56 billion, Recto said.
There is a PHP32.6-billion “Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially-Incapacitated Patients” in the 2023 GAA.
Up from PHP21.3 billion last year, the fund will be administered by the Department of Health (DOH).
During last year’s budget deliberation, Department of Health Officer-in-Charge Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire urged Congress to restore the line-item appropriations for the two programs.
Recto backed Vergeire and emphasized that “restoring the cancer fund in the national budget is one doctor’s order we cannot ignore.”
“The cancer fund is not a tumor that must be excised from the budget. It is a treatment tool which, on the contrary, must be boosted,” he added.
Records showed that in 2021, cancer killed almost 60,000 Filipinos or one in every nine minutes. (PNA)
