Philippines Collated News:- Philhealth hacked! Some Schools Shutting Over Nipah Fears Despite No Identified Local Cases. SB-1869 (CDC Bill) Relabeled. More Jabs Planned. DOH Health Agenda Shared.
Small increase in cancer deaths among late registered 2022 all-cause mortality? I suggest this the canary in the coal-mine advance warning of exploding cancers in 2023? PSA data is still pending!
Hackers have broken into the Philhealth System, the Government mandated health Philippine Health Insurance Corporation which is attached to the Department of Health, and administers the National Health Insurance Program, which was established to provide health insurance coverage and ensure affordable and accessible health care services for all Filipinos. They are demanding PHP300,000 ransom.
The Philhealth system is off-line and users can only make in-person over-the-counter transactions for now. The system is projected to be back on line within a few days. The trust of businesses and system users will be sorely shaken by this hack! It would seem that no data is safe. The more personal data that is held on-line, the more potential there is for hacking and/or misuse of that data!
Nipah Virus Shutting Down Schools - Despite No Detected Local Cases
Despite no cases of Nipah virus in the Philippines, certain schools in Cagayan have closed their schools and asked students to attend remote on-line classes (notices below). The behavior of the population almost seems to mimic the conditioning of Pavlov’s dogs. Trigger fear = Trigger lockdowns! Knee-jerk terror reaction! No thought to actual real risks, no thought to the damage and losses from loss of face-to-face learning, perhaps not thought at all!!! These are dangerous times we live in when the population simply reacts to a cue without, apparently, any independent thought!
Rebranding of SB1869 from Philippines CDC to National Disease Prevention Management Authority.
Senator Bong Go has represented that the Philippines Senate will be pushing 3 priority bills before the end of 2023. These are medical reserve corps bill (SBN-1120) to call up unlicensed but graduated medical field trainees to serve during public health emergency, the National Disease Prevention Managment Authority, which is still SB-1869, but rebranded to sound less ominous, and the establishment of a Philippines Virology Institute (SBN-941); a perfect site for external mature regulatory / research agency directed gain of function research on emerging pathogens of interest (note the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm)?
Is this rebranding a tactic to avoid opposition to the SB1869? Change the name and avoid scrutiny? Hopefully not! The lobbying and education of all parties by concerned citizens over this measure will continue!
More Covid-19 Vaccines asks Go. Probably a No for now amidst very low demand.
Go is asking the Government to consider whether they need to purchase more Covid-19 vaccines for the population. He is confident that DOH will make its decision based on science; I suppose that is “the science” which brokers no questions. Hopefully their decision will also take into consideration demand, which has tanked.
Regardless, it seems that just over 95% of the 390,000 Lithuanian donated Pfizer jabs have finally been consumed. DOH is now coordinating with COVAX and Gavi to secure some millions of additional doses by the end of 2023 and into 2024. As of March 2023 (not updated since), 78.4 million Filipinos submitted to being primary series dosed, and some 23.8 million have received booster doses.
Philippines 8-Point Agenda for Health, Equates Vaccines with Disease Prevention. Includes Pandemic Preparedness.
Herbosa has prevented his 8-point agenda for health: vaccination of children, medical access and pandemic readiness feature prominently. His target to reduce malnutrition is commendable! Addressing poverty, food access, food security should all be part of this.
Have I Discovered An Early Alarm for Rising Cases of Cancer Cases at the End of 2022?
No 2023 vital statistics data have been released to date, which is outside prior typical patterns of data release.
2022 data is still slowly being updated and compiled. The first “full set” of 2022 data was released as of the end of February 2023. 3 further updates have been released, each with accompanying COD data and the 2022 data is now effective as of 31 May 2023.
Most, though not all, of the late registrations will reflect deaths registered in the last 1/4 of 2022. If the causes of death were steady in the population the proportion of late registration deaths should remain equally distributed amongst causes.
To investigate this, I looked at the changes in % contribution of each of the 5 top causes of deaths in the updated 2022 deaths. While the % changes are still small, what I observed is that over the 49,679 late registrations encoded between 1st March and 31 May 2023, the proportion of deaths attributed to Diabetes, Cerebrovascular Disease and hypertensive disease were stable, the proportion of deaths attributed to Ischemic Heart Disease consistently decreased over each updated data set, and the proportion of deaths attributed to Neoplasms (cancer) consistently increased!
That finding should not be expected if cancer deaths were not increasing towards the end of 2022.
Is this an early warning? Quite possibly. The anecdotal accounts of cancers, and reports in my networks of people attending wakes for young persons who have died suddenly from cancer is increasing day by day.
The media is beginning to express the Government’s apparent alarm over cancer deaths. If alarms are ignored, the situation may out of control before it is acknowledged.
In truth, it will be impossible to know the real situation until accurate and fair data is released! Will it be released? Maybe, maybe not! I have heard from a reputable source that during natural disasters (Yolanda was referred to), the government simply stops release of death data to avoid alarming the population.
If that holds, perhaps PSA will not complete 2021 data, will not release 2023 data, and we may not know true population impacts until the 2025 census, if indeed that census will be conducted accurately and in good faith!
Philippines may not be alone in attempting delay or to camouflage death data. Australia, New Zealand, and other Countries are doing the same. Discussion by Dr. John on excess deaths.