{"id":8712,"date":"2019-10-31T13:45:41","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T05:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/?p=8712"},"modified":"2019-11-15T11:03:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T03:03:29","slug":"cant-afford-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/cant-afford-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Can\u2019t afford to die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My friend\u2019s <em>lola<\/em> died last month. She was dear to me,\nas I grew up without grandparents and she was the <em>lola<\/em> I never had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She once left the country to work as a domestic helper to\nensure that all of her eight children would finish school. She liked gardening\nand ballroom dancing. She loved preparing for family picnics and enjoyed\ntraveling despite her old age. Until she had a debilitating kidney disease and\nhad to undergo dialysis thrice a week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The treatment weakened her physically but her spirits never wavered.\nYou could see in her eyes that she still wanted to spend more time with her\ngrand- and great grandchildren. But she passed on one fine morning while\npreparing for her regular dialysis session. It was not unexpected, but all\nfamily and friends still grieved for Lola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her death has caused me sadness. But it has also made me\nthink of the cost of dying as well as the cost of staying alive in our country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lola\u2019s funeral service cost around Php100,000. She was\npractical enough to prepare for her death \u2013 she bought a memorial plan. The other\nfuneral costs were mostly covered by the pooling of resources of her sons and\ndaughters and the collection from the <em>abuloy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There were also other necessary expenses. Her wake lasted\nfor five nights, and of course (especially in the province), this entailed\nfeeding the guests for almost 24 hours. The family had four pigs butchered,\nbought three sacks of rice, boxes and boxes of juice, 3-in-1 coffee and\nchocolate drinks, packs of bread, and other <em>kutkutin<\/em> that is usual in\nFilipino wakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not everyone has the financial capacity that Lola\u2019s family has.\nNot everyone can afford to buy memorial plans or to extend one\u2019s life by\ngetting medical attention. And that\u2019s the sadder part for most of us \u2013 healthcare\nservice is available only to those who can afford it. It is not government\npriority, and privatization of provision is the main government policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the year 2020, the health department\u2019s budget has been\nslashed by Php9.2 billion. The Philippine General Hospital (PGH) also received\na Php456 million cut in its budget. PGH is the go-to public hospital of our indigent\n<em>kababayans, <\/em>not just from Metro Manila but especially those coming from the\nrural areas,who cannot afford the exorbitant health service in private\nhospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Filipino families are left to pay for a social service, a\nhuman right, which should be accessible and realized for all. According to the\nPhilippine National Health Accounts, households spent the highest health\nexpenditure in 2018, with out-of-pocket spending comprising 54% or Php413\nbillion of the current health expenditure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Half of the out-of-pocket spending was spent on pharmacies.\nHospitals received the second largest amount (Php148.8 billion), bulk of which\nwent to private general hospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Government neglect of health service in the country is an\noutright violation of the right to health. High statistics of Filipinos dying\nwithout seeing a doctor or receiving any medical attention are stark indicators\nof this violation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet, while most of us are not given the fair chance to get\ncured or cared for, most of us also are not given decent burial. Graveyard\nplots cost around Php65,000 to Php100,000, almost the annual income of a\nminimum wage earner. In Manila North cemetery, a five-year lease for an \u201capartment\nstyle\u201d niche and a tombstone costs Php600. The contracts are non-renewable, so\nthe bones of the dead must be transferred to other cemeteries after the lease.\nUnclaimed bones, most probably belonging to poor families who cannot afford another\ngrave, are buried in mass graves inside the cemetery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As the saying goes, <em>mahirap maging mahirap.<\/em> It\u2019s hard\nwhen a poor person gets sick, still the suffering doesn\u2019t stop when he dies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One thing\u2019s for sure right now \u2013 I can\u2019t afford to die. ###<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Photo from jevalryvalentine.wordpress.com<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend\u2019s lola died last month. She was dear to me, as I grew up without grandparents and she was the lola I never had. She once left the country to work as a domestic helper to ensure that all of her eight children would finish school. She liked gardening and ballroom dancing. She loved [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":8713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-nosidebarbanner.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048,2049],"tags":[2097,2096,347,353,2045,2095,116,2047],"class_list":["post-8712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banner","category-bird-feed","tag-death-care","tag-death-care-in-the-philippines","tag-duterte-administration","tag-health","tag-health-privatization-in-the-philippines","tag-healthcare","tag-philippine-economy","tag-programs-and-policies","wpautop"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 14:30:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8714,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8712\/revisions\/8714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}