Saving Samar’s pregnant women

“Every mother’s death is a human tragedy — and the ripple effects on her family are enormous: her baby is more likely to die before the age of two and her other children are 10 times more likely to leave school, suffer from poor health, and die prematurely. In the Philippines, 11 mothers die of pregnancy and pregnancy-related causes daily.”

This statement gives flesh to the most current statistics showing that the Philippines is lagging behind the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 target with maternal mortality ratio (MMR) increasing from 162 to 221 per 100,000 live births.

Government efforts are not enough to stem the tragic tide of mothers dying while on the way to giving life. The good news is that two private institutions have answered the call to help turn things around. These are the Global Pharmaceutical Company MSD (known as Merck in the US and Canada) and the Zuellig Family Foundation (ZFF) through their project, “MSD for Mothers and ZFF Community Health Partnership: The Joint Development Initiative.”

The initiative will implement the Health Change Model, a systematic and systemic approach to enhance health leadership and governance in 21 geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDAs) in Samar Island.

The program focuses on the three provinces of Samar Island having the lowest human development index with MMR as follows: West Samar at 134, Northern Samar at 89, and Eastern Samar at 110. The over-all MMR of Samar Island is influenced by the poor performances of the GIDA municipalities which the program hopes to improve.

“This partnership aims to help the country attain the MDG of reducing maternal mortality,” said Sanjiv Navangul, president and managing director of MSD in the Philippines. “It also supports the DOH in its vision of Universal Health Care and empowers the local government units towards health leadership and governance. MSD is firm in its commitment to finding solutions to the health challenges we face today. We remain committed to making our vision a reality — a world where no mother has to die giving life.”

Health Secretary Enrique Ona welcomes the joint initiative in reducing maternal mortality. “The problem cannot be solved by one party alone. Thus, in addition to our existing health programs to address the country’s problems in maternal health, public-private partnerships like this would enable us to combine our resources and deliver more impact to as many of our countrymen as possible,” he said.

“The Health Change Model begins with training the local government executives and health officers, empowering them in reforming and strengthening the local health systems and building the capacity of the barangay health workers and midwives to ensure the quality and delivery of antenatal and obstetric care services. The empowerment of the LGU and its people is key to the sustainability of the program even after the 3 years we are there,” explained Prof. Ernie Garilao, president of ZFF.

Samar is fortunate to receive such attention. Actually, MSD launched its “MSD for Mothers” program more than a year ago in September 2011 at the United Nations in New York. The aim of this corporate responsibility initiative “is to help create a world where no woman has to die from pregnancy and childbirth, and to help reduce the burden of maternal mortality globally,” said MSD Asia Pacific president Patrick Bergstedt. “It is a 10-year commitment in which MSD will apply its scientific and business expertise, human, and financial resources to delivering life-saving solutions to women.” 

The MSD and ZFF three-year development program is the first initiative in Asia of the MSD for Mothers Global Giving Program. MSD is providing a P20 million grant with a counterpart of P18.4 million from ZFF.

The Zuellig Family Foundation has practiced its philanthropic mission to promote sustainable healthcare system in the Philippines with an emphasis on primary healthcare services in rural communities.

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The Naoshima Onna Bunraku, an all-female volunteer puppet theater group of housewives, teachers and professionals in their 50s and 60s, demonstrated samplings of their well-acclaimed “Banraku” puppet shows before the Bulong Pulungan sa Sofitel Tuesday.

We’re used to watching puppet shows with puppeteers tugging at strings to make wooden dolls move. The Bunraku presentations Tuesday noon at Bulong Pulungan and at the  Maestranza Park in Intramruros in the evening, had the puppeteers make the dolls move their heads, arms and necks with a click of their hands and fingers.

The troupe revives the ancient art of puppetry of the island of Naoshima in southern Japan, and is recognized by the Kagawa Prefecture as “a tangible and intangible heritage.”

Training these volunteer puppeteers takes long. It takes 10 years to master the movements of the right hand and another 10 for the left hand. And the puppets themselves, made of wood, with white ceramic faces, and fabulous black hairdos and colorful kimonos take a year to make.

We did not see the evening performances, but we saw handout pictures of puppet dolls — fierce-looks of males and mesmerized expressions of females. We don’t understand the Nippongo incantations, but we deduced from body movements the pains and joys of the wooden figures through the skillfull handling of three puppeteers.

For the Bulong Pulungan media, members of the troupe performed the “Pilgrim’s Song” from the drama “Keisei Awa no Naruto” (The Courtesan of Naruto in the Province of Awa). The excerpted portion featured two characters: Oyumi (the mother) who had left her daughter (Otsuru) years before with her own mother. Oyumi and Otsuru finally meet after a long journey.

The UP Center for International Studies Bunraku Ensemble and the Noh Theatre also performed brief excerpts in support of the Naoshima Onna Bunraku performances. UPCIS was scheduled to perform Tuesday evening excerpts from “Ang Paglalakbay ni Sisa, Isang Noh sa Laguna” (The Travels of Sisa, A Noh in Laguna), a retelling of Prof. Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio’s play based on Rizal’s “Sisa” character, which was then converted into a “Shinsaku” or newly created Noh with dance, chant, drums with vocal music, costumes and mask.

The  Naoshima  Onna  Bunraku per-formed “Keisei Awa no Naruto, Dango Uri” (The Dumpling Peddlers), a comedy involving a husband-and-wife pair of rice dumpling vendors, and “Ebisu Mai” (The Dance of Ebisu), a puppet adaptation of a folk dance native to the island of Naoshima.

The Bunraku performances were a  main feature of the 40th anniversary of the ASEAN-Japan Friendship and Cooperation. Venue was the Maestranza Park, along the banks of Pasig River, one of whose attractions is the Almacenes Curtain Wall which served as the military quarters and royal chambers during the Spanish period, and which were destroyed during the shelling by American bombers of Intramuros during the Second World War, purportedly to ferret out Japanese soldiers of tunnels where earlier thousands of Filipinos who had been incarcerated by the Japanese drowned by the seepage of rising waters of Pasig. 

Joe Capistrano, administrator of Intramuros Administration, says the Maestranza Park has been restored with the support of the Japanese government.

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