Mar and the Sword of Damocles
Some people have found cockroach crap in their coffee, another discovered the meaning of “Disgusting Foreign Matter” in their salad, 21 kids outside of
But what happens when you learn that in 1999 the government randomly tested 49 drug samples and 60% or 29 of them failed testing. In the following year 460 drugs were in violation of the Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act. Yet none of the local manufacturers or suppliers were shut down. When a BFAD Director tried to initiate exclusion of the suppliers, he was sued in a civil case.
A local court allowed the erring supplier to replace the bad batch with new supplies. Ironically, the ruling only came after the bad batch had been used up.
The nightmare goes on. An anticonvulsant medication that does not work, asthma medicines that don’t give relief, injectable solution for uterine contractions that don’t cause contractions leading to emergency hysterectomy and medicines that cause damage to the uterus.
Stuff like these are not supposed to happen in a country that has long established a Bureau of Food and Drugs. Ideally the BFAD people are suppose to be our guardian angels, secret agents and super cops who monitor anything and everything that has to do with Food and Drugs. But that is currently more of a dream and nowhere near reality.
The BFAD I discovered has no power over fast food chains. A recent complaint led nowhere because it was outside their jurisdiction. From what I learned the BFAD has one officer for every 205 companies under their control. For each evaluator or inspector there are 1,500 plus products or medicine which has about 5 sub-groups. With their limited resources, BFAD personnel are suppose to randomly buy sample products in different regions, provinces etc to procure samples independently.
I heard they really try their best even if they gallantly fall short of international standards because of insufficient funding. The nightmare for any BFAD officer begins when their hard work results in conflict with the business interest of some company or influential businessman.
On one occasion, a US trained senior official of BFAD conducted their regular evaluation of products being sold to government hospitals. To insure impartiality, names of suppliers were not included in the evaluation. After the testing and evaluation several dozen products were excluded. In response to their exclusion, one company sued the BFAD official. The guy took it in stride as part of his job. But when he reportedly started receiving black ribbons, the official chose to join a large multinational company instead.
In another case, a senior BFAD officer was sued for allowing the initial study and testing of a product for local manufacture that was reportedly still under patent of the manufacturer. The BFAD official who is just an underling of cabinet members does not exactly have a lot of elbow room to argue especially when no less than the Office of the President has been used in the discussions. Unfortunately bureaucrats don’t have powerful law firms to defend them and when your pension gets tied up because of a law suit, what do you eat on?
Before everyone gets giddy with the potential harvest of political goodwill when they pass the bill for “Quality Affordable Medicines” it might be a wise move to insure that the BFAD has the power, the funds and people with political will to do the job.
The worst thing that can happen is to have a law that results in killing a lot of people because we threw open the gates for criminals to import cheap, ineffective, and destructive medicines.
Sen. Mar Roxas has never been shy about his political ambition but he need only study the tragic experience of former Sen. Ralph Recto to realize that today’s good can become tomorrow’s nightmare.
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For some time now there has been a brewing controversy about water quality particularly about lead contents or contaminants. The curious thing about this potential health and public relations nightmare is that the controversy is sparked both by content and attitude.
The problem we have in the
Just observe most vehicular accidents or personal injury situations. When two vehicles collide, the drivers rush out of their vehicles not because of concern for others who might be hurt but in order to be the first to lay the blame! Accusation has become our national instinct and blame throwing one of our principal past time. If we ever had to kill a goat for every sin of blame, goat-raising would undoubtedly be a thriving industry!
A simple statement saying “we regularly test our water and no contaminants were found” would have been enough, or reference to an independent testing authority would certainly put closure on it or passed the buck to the right people.
In terms of attitudes, why are the traditional corporate spokespersons always on the defensive? Even when they’re not guilty of something or hiding something, they always send out an air of defensiveness.
Why do we always have to be alarmists just to get some attention? Just listen to most advertisements on radio and TV and you would think that the
Even ordinary arrivals or departure from airports, courts or places of detention are reported like a blow by blow account in
Rather than using intellect the response is often emotional. Sadly some of the noise makers don’t really deserve our time or attention. But just as they have bad attitudes, most of us have bad habits. We have to learn to ignore the noise and the distractions and focus on the problems, find the solutions.
At the moment the yappers only say we have a problem but no one has really explained how the problem came about and what we can do to solve the problem. As they say you’re either the solution to the problem because if you’re not, then get out of the way.
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