Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 1) – The House of Representatives Committee on Health approved on Monday the bill which seeks to establish the Philippine Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
Once enacted into law, the CDPC will be created as an attached agency to the Department of Health and the principal institution mandated to develop and apply communicable disease prevention initiatives.
“The bill seeks to modernize the country’s capabilities for public health emergency preparedness and strengthen the current bureaucracy that is mandated to address communicable diseases in the country through organizational and institutional reforms,” said Committee on Health chairperson and Quezon City Rep. Angelina Helen Tan in a statement.
Under the bill, the CDPC will prioritize disease surveillance, prevention, and control of infectious diseases.
Moreover, it mandates the undertaking of necessary reforms in the recruitment, training, employment, and management of the country’s public health emergency personnel. It also seeks to improve facilities needed for public health emergencies.
The CDPC would absorb the Department of Health’s Epidemiology Bureau, the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, the STD AIDS Cooperative Central Laboratory, the International Health Surveillance Division of the Bureau of Quarantine, and the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau.
“We cannot merely keep on rearranging the boxes within our health organization without capacitating our health personnel and resources. That will not work. We need to modernize and reorganize our health system at the same time to protect the public from health risks,” added Tan.
