As chief implementer o f the CPR Law

A trip to a hospital emergency room because of sudden heart failure can be fatal indeed without immediate CPR intervention.

The celebration we have each year during the Christmas season is a period when hospitals become busy. Official records have shown that emergency rooms in hospitals are the busiest places during the season, treating cases of heart attacks and strokes at its highest incidence. Doctors tell us this is precisely why they and the rest of the medical profession do not get to enjoy the Christmas holiday respite.

We kicked off this year’s Christmas celebration with health promotion tips and medical advisories from leading doctors and founding fathers of the successful Filipino-owned Bell Kenz (BK) Pharma Inc. Dr. James Cayetano, director and president of BK Foundation, joined us in the pre-Christmas edition of our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday.

At the outset, Cayetano said the Philippines is known for having the longest Christmas celebration, usually capped by food and drinking “binge” feasts and parties. After all, this is the holiday season when people enjoy eating lechon, sweet desserts, soft drinks and beer, if not hard liquor and other alcoholic drinks.

Added to this is losing sleep and fatigue due to late-night partying. He described it as a “bad combination” of too much consumption of fats at Christmas-related gatherings and stress over preparations, such extra money to buy food for Noche Buena, gifts and other expenses.

“These are the Christmas risks that people face while enjoying the holiday food and drinking binges, whether rich or poor,” he warned.

Called holiday heart syndrome (HHS) or temporary irregular heartbeat, this and other cardiovascular diseases can worsen the situation of people who are hypertensive. The incidence of hypertension also increases during the holidays, as blood pressure shoots up with these “multi-factorial” causes, he pointed out.

The same warning was echoed in our discussions with Cayetano’s fellow cardiologist, Dr. Francis Marie Purino, consultant of Le Sante Vida, who is a vascular calcification specialist. Without acting like a kill-joy of the Christmas spirit, Dra. Purino called for “moderation” in the eating and drinking sprees. She further advised those with existing conditions as hypertension, diabetes and other comorbidities to continue taking their maintenance medicines.

According to her, among the symptoms of a heart attack are chest pain, difficulty in breathing or even experiencing stomach ache or indigestion-like signs. Manifestation of a brain stroke, on the other hand, includes problems with balance and slurring of speech, she added. Purino strongly suggested that any person experiencing such symptoms should immediately seek medical check-up or go to the nearest hospital.

Doctors like Cayetano and Purino reiterated the popular adage that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. A heart attack or stroke is not only life-threatening but could also be debilitating to the family resources due to medical bills when hospitalized.

They heartily welcomed the “zero-billing” order of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) in government hospitals. Personally speaking, Cayetano echoed the wish that the P51.6 billion under the Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP) be administered instead by the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. and not the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) next year.

Cayetano cited heart attack remains the No. 1 killer disease in our country. He noted with dismay that at least 300 people die each day due to heart disease, based on official figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). From the same PSA data, Cayetano noted eight out of 10 cardiac arrests died at home, in office or community and died because the victim was not administered any life-saving first aid intervention.

This is why the BK Foundation renewed their pitch for the implementation of Republic Act (RA) 10871, or the Basic Life Support Training in Schools Act. Also called the Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) Act, RA 10871 became a law 11 years ago.

Dubbed as the “Samboy Lim Law,” the law was named after the popular Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) player Avelino “Samboy” Lim Jr. The late PBA icon suffered a heart attack while stretching for a charity game in November 2016.

But no one among those at the gym knew about CPR. After Samboy collapsed, it was only 23 to 25 minutes later when the ambulance came and took him to a nearby hospital. Doctors and nurses were able to revive Samboy but he fell into a coma. Although he survived, he never fully recovered and was unable to walk, see or speak because his brain did not get oxygen during those precious first few minutes without CPR applied to him.

As mandated by this law, CPR will be taught under the K-12 curriculum to students from Grade 5 to Senior High School who are from ages 11 to 12 years old all the way to 16 to 18 years old.

The Department of Education (DepEd) and the Department of Health (DOH), along with medical groups and barangay health centers as stakeholders, were tasked to craft together the implementing rules and regulations (IRR).

Despite the IRR, the letter and spirit of the “Lim Law literally became a dead letter law since then.

This, however, did not dishearten the BK Foundation to pursue as its own corporate social responsibility advocacy to conduct free CPR training. Patrick Larraga of Bell Kenz told us at the same Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum they are implementing their Sagip-CPR campaign to more schools and local government units (LGUs) in the coming year in a bid to make the entire country “CPR-ready.”

A trip to a hospital emergency room because of sudden heart failure can be fatal indeed without immediate CPR intervention.

The CPR skills training requirement for these K-12 school-aged teeners deserves the all-out support of DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara. The DepEd secretary should not lose time to pick up the ball and let this CPR skill become part of school training.

A basketball enthusiast, Angara should not just enjoy playing this sport. He is, after all, the mandated chief implementer of the CPR Law.