Begging for their lives

Through all these years that we hold our weekly Kapihan sa Manila Bay, it was only now that I learned that the owners of our venue at Café Adriatico in Remedios Circle in Malate have been the benefactor of the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) Cancer Institute. Dr. Jorge Ignacio, head of the UP-PGH Cancer Institute revealed this during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay last Wednesday when we talked about the breast cancer incidence in the Philippines.

According to Dr. Ignacio, the LJC Restaurant Group – owned by the late journalist and magazine publisher-turned restaurateur Lorenzo “Larry” J. Cruz – has been donating the earnings out of all orders of their customers on “All Time Favorites” in the menus of the LJC restaurant establishments. Dr. Ignacio personally lauded Lorna C. Ambas, Cruz’s daughter, who is the president of the family-run chain of LJC restaurants in Metro Manila. Lorna’s late father also died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 67 years old.

The head of the government-run UP-PGH Cancer Institute could only wish there would be more kind-hearted benefactors to help many cancer-stricken patients. Some of them like former presidential legislative liaison office secretary Jimmie Policarpio also have been quietly helping for the care of cancer-stricken children undergoing treatment at the UP-PGH in Taft Avenue, Manila.

Taking up the cause of similarly situated cancer victims, Tingog party list representative Jude Acidre and Kasuso Foundation vice president Aileen Antolin added their respective calls during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay breakfast news forum. Antolin recalled the warning of experts during the World Cancer Congress held in October last year in Geneva.

While COVID 19-impacted countries including the Philippines, are emerging gradually out of the pandemic, Antolin cited the global concern that cancer has already reached “epidemic level” in the Philippines and in the rest of the world. “Cancer is forever and it is here to stay,” she quoted the experts.

Speaking for the party list Tingog (Visayan word for voice), Acidre conceded the P1.5-billion Cancer Assistance Fund in the 2023 budget of the Department of Health (DOH) is not enough to help most especially the indigent cancer patients.  Of the budget, if I’m not mistaken, this is distributed to about 23 government hospitals where poor patients can go for free cancer treatment. “We are not saying it (cancer treatment) is not a priority, but we have to look for other source of revenue and intervention,” Acidre stressed.

Acidre pointed to the “very limited fiscal space” through which Congress could work out schemes to augment the Cancer Assistance Fund of the DOH from other agencies of the government and from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.

Originally, advocates for cost-effective cancer treatment sought at least P5 billion as Cancer Assistance Fund. If only the “intelligence funds” in the budget of various governments can be pooled instead to raise the Cancer Fund to P10 to 15 billion or even more.

This will save scores of Filipinos suffering from different types of cancer, most of which are deadly.

Acidre admitted the “social costs” of cancer, especially mothers afflicted with breast cancer. He lamented that the “social cost” of cancer to families also carry the burden of the emotional and psychological impact to the children. Except for those genetically predisposed to cancer and lifestyle factor, half of the costs could be avoided through cancer prevention awareness, Acidre urged.

As the House deputy majority leader, Acidre disclosed, they are working on a draft bill to put up a National Cancer Center as a specialty hospital for all types of cancer. This is to complement, he cited, the regional cancer centers already mandated in the National Integrated Cancer Control Act (NICCA) under Republic Act (RA) 11215 that was signed into law by former President Rodrigo Duterte in February, 2019.

The DOH quoted data from the 2018 Global Data on Cancer that showed more than 140,000 new cancer cases and more than 80,000 cancer deaths are expected in the Philippines every year. Of this total, 4,000 of the projected new cases will fall on the pediatric age group. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Filipinos, followed by lung, colon, liver, and prostate.  Lung cancer tops the leading cause of death among all cancers followed by liver, breast, colon, and leukemia.

From the latest data available, there are around 27,000 new breast cancer patients each year in our country and around 9,000 die largely because of late diagnosis, lack of cancer centers and specialists. With new scientific approaches/discoveries in the treatment of breast cancer, survival rate is more than 90 percent, if detected early.

Would you believe that out of 110 million Filipino population to date, we have only 348 medical oncologists, or doctors who specialized in cancer treatment? Of that 348 oncologists, 200 of them are connected with the UP-PGH but only five of them have plantilla positions, Dr. Ignacio rued.

Precision medicine is now the in-thing because of the latest medical advances. For cancer, “targeted therapy” has been in use the past ten years or so abroad. “Targeted therapy” can be administered intravenously (IV) or through a simple injection (subcutaneous) using trastuzumab.

Compared to injection targeted medicine that can be done in 5 to 15 minutes, this gives patients a better quality of life aside from being not losing hair and not compromising their other internal organs as chemotherapy does.

It goes after cancer cells only unlike chemotherapy which kills both good and bad cells. It takes three to four hours to administer chemo session. At a total cost of around P450,000 per patient for 18 cycles of chemotherapy, only a little more than 200 patients are cared or saved for each year.  An oncologist by specialty, Dr. Ignacio admitted “targeted therapy” though is more expensive.

He could only echo the appeals for help by the many indigent cancer patients who are practically begging for their lives.