rePost:Would really like to know other people's thoughts on this!:GMANews.TV – Botika ng Barangay not in poorest places – Special Reports – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News – BETA

As stated by the article I’m paraphrasing this, The politicians from those poorest of the poor provinces need to get off their asses and aggressively initiate a botika ng bayan (drugstore) in thier baranggays. Think that the problem is two fold, It would be helpful to see the feasibility studies of the BNB, I’m particularly interested in how they arrived at the 15,000population. Maybe the private sector or individuals can come up with the 25000 peso seed money and directly pay the DOH for the medicine for the poorest baranggays that cannot even meet the minimum requirements or have very lazy local public officials.
Wow two public health policy posts in a day woot woot!

Botika ng Barangay not in poorest places
JAN MARCEL RAGAZA and ALLIAGE MORALES, VERA Files
04/14/2009 | 04:49 PM
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First of two parts
If a minimum wage earner were to be stricken with diarrhea, relief can come cheap from the Department of Health’s Botika ng Barangay BnB outlets, where a 2-milligram capsule of generic loperamide would cost only P1.05.
The BnB price is vastly lower than what loperamide costs in commercial drugstores—P4.10 for generic and P14 for branded.
Launched by President Gloria Arroyo in 2001, the BnB program is the answer to poor Filipinos’ need for cheap medicine. But here’s the catch: There is not a single BnB outlet in some of the country’s poorest provinces and towns where they are needed most.
As of January 2009, there were 12,341botikas, a long way from the 427 in 2003. But the program covers only half of the country’s 42,000 barangays and suffers from poor implementation and conflicting priorities from top to bottom. As a result, the BnB program has wasted scarce resources while denying health care services to the poorest areas it was meant to serve.
One example is the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao which, aside from having the least number of hospitals and barangay health centers, has the smallest number of BnB outlets, numbering 78 as of last January. All the BnB outlets in ARMM are in Maguindanao, leaving the provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Lanao del Sur and Tawi-tawi without any BnB drugstore.
via GMANews.TV – Botika ng Barangay not in poorest places – Special Reports – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News – BETA.