Officials craft agreement setting up of FDA office in BARMM

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The Food and Drug Administration and the Bangsamoro health ministry had forged a memorandum of agreement to cooperate in setting up an FDA service facility in the autonomous region.

The FDA, which is under the Department of Health, facilitates the regulation of drugs, health products, food supplements, processed chemicals for agricultural and household use. Its functions and powers are not devolved to the regional government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The MOA was signed by the lawyer Paolo Teston, director-general of FDA, BARMM Health Minister Kadil Sinolinding Jr. and the chief of their legal and legislative office, the lawyer Jeihan Jein Gulo, during a symbolic rite on Thursday morning, July 10, at the Bangsamoro regional capitol in Cotabato City.

Health Undersecretary Abdullah Dumama, Jr. from the central office of the Department of Health, the lawyer Christian Lei Saquilabon, DOH assistant health secretary representing the department’s regulation facility development cluster, and the physician Abdulhalik Kasim, regional assistant secretary in the Ministry of Health-BARMM, stood as witnesses to the crafting of the MOA.

Sinolinding, a physician-ophthalmologist trained in India, Dumama, a former regional director of DOH-12, and Teston separately told reporters that the setting up an FDA office in BARMM will benefit the region's Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities.

“Potential clients do not have to go to the office of the FDA in Metro Manila anymore for their transactions,” Sinolinding said.

BARMM covers the provinces of Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where its regional government operations center is located.

Dumama said the setting up of an FDA office in BARMM will boost the health programs of the Bangsamoro government, whose chief minister, Abdulrauf  Macacua, is also figurehead of the region’s 80-seat regional parliament.