DAVAO CITY – The Department of Health launched a new strategy to achieve the country’s targets on the the Millennium Development Goals and Universal Health Care.
According to a Philippine Information Agency dispatch, Abdullah Dumama, Jr., DOH-XI regional director, said that they have employed the Reaching Every Purok and RAIDERS (Reach and Innovate Desired Rational Score) strategy to attain the target.
The strategy is particularly aimed “on reducing mortality rates on maternal, infant and child under five years old.”
The dispatch said the “High Impact Five strategies” is a “bid to speed up delivery of services on maternal care, infant and child care, and elimination of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).”
Dumama said that “there’s little time left before we make our agency report to the UN (United Nations) for our MDG commitment considering [President Benigno Aquino’s] term will end by June 2016.”
The report said that in 2010, the maternal mortality ratio of Region XI is 90 and increased to 144 in 2014. It added that majority of the maternal deaths in 2014 based on occurrence are from Davao del Norte and Davao Oriental.
Dumama said that facility based deliveries increased from 61 percent in 2010 to 79 percent in 2014.
Meanwhile, the percentage of pregnant women with at least four prenatal visits is now 50 percent, an increase from 22.8 percent in 2010. The DOH’s target is at 85 percent.
Dumama said that they achieved 79.3 percent of the 95 percent national target on fully immunized children in 2014.
The DOH said People Living with HIV (PLHIVs) in the region has reached 1,362 with an annual average of 45 cases or roughly four cases per month within the period 1984 to December 2014.
But in January alone this year, the DOH recorded 34 new cases, eight times more than the previous 30-year monthly trend.
