[X] "Agrobiodiversity and Monoculture Homogenization in Agri/Culture" (UP Forum, 2011). [X] "The Fight for Education as Dress Rehearsal" (UP Forum, 2011). [X] "Community Sterilization and the Cataclysm" (UP Forum, 2012). [X] "Pamana at Pagkalinga ng mga Inang Makabayan" (UP Forum, 2012). [X] "Beyond the Bark: Reexamining our Roots" (UP Forum, 2012). [--] "Enabling Law Disabling 'Small Dictatorships'" (UP Forum, 2013). [--] "Power Switch: Reconsidering Renewable Energy" (UP Forum, 2013). "Fortun, Forensics and the Yolanda Aftermath: Recovery, Storage, System Restore, Repeat" (UP Forum, 2014). "General Education at Globalisasyon: Isip, Salita at Gawa Para Kanino?" (UP Forum, 2014)
magbabago ang listahan sa bawat post. simulan na natin.
Community
Sterilization and the Cataclysm
From all over the
archipelago, the University of the Philippines (UP) is among the institutions which
took the initiative to help the victims, not just of the wrath of nature, but
also of a defunct social system preserved by its engineers, agents and
administrators, who shall be held liable for the loss of lives and properties. Unlike
hypocritical bureaucrats and profiteers washing their hands clean, branding
relief goods with their names and flaunting their perverted version of helping,
UP went beyond broadcasted charity.
In its capacity to live up to its mandate to serve the
people, the UP Padayon Disaster Response Team responded to the need for human
resources and technical knowledge when TS Sendong hits the South. Its report
“provides a starting point for more studies and exchanges on disaster response
and related work in various academic disciplines in the university,” as its overall
team leader UP Vice-President for Public Affairs J. Prospero De Vera III put it;
an inquiry into the roots of societal problems is called for, by starting with
the report of the public health group, one of the four groups of UP Padayon—that
gives us a glimpse into how our system generally deals with natural
disasters and their aftermath.
Disinfection
operations
“I see the sun, and if I
don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in
knowing that the sun is there,” writes Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. Despite Sendong’s wreaking havoc before
Christmas, the skies of Northern Mindanao eventually gave way to the sun: with
our sense of bayanihan—not the mere
lifting of houses, but rebuilding homes. The livelihood of the people may have
been in tatters, but they may take the incident and look forward to a fresh
start, while still being critical, so as learning may be extracted. In The Politics of Experience, Laing wrote
that the perspective of a man “alienated from his source creation arises from
despair and ends in failure,” not having “trodden the path to the end of time,”
of space, of darkness and of light, he is not aware that “where it all ends,
there it all begins.”
“People shall be taught how to recover, how to make
things normal again and how to cope with the situation,” said Dr. Buenalyn
Teresita Ramos-Mortel, head of the public health team. She said that though
constituent units and their respective departments have been involved in relief
operations, this is the first time that UP as a system took the lead in lending
a hand to typhoon-ravaged communities. In its report, the public health team pinpointed
the needs of the particular community in Northern Mindanao designated by the
Health Emergency Management Staff (HEMS) of the Department of Health (DOH).
Mortel added that coordinators know how to organize things at the area because
of the training course called Public Health and Emergency Management in Asia
and the Pacific (PHEMAP), which was organized by the DOH-HEMS, in coordination
with UP College of Public Health, prior the catastrophe.
The public health team reported that during their visit
on December 28 last year, there were fifteen evacuation centers and “the six
most populated evacuation centers and their respective families,” as of January
24 were: Digkilaan (442), Mandulog (400), Ubaldo Laya (353), Sta. Filomena
(333), Luinab (311) and MSU-IIT Gym (241). The team visited four areas that
served as evacuation centers of affected barangay residents. The sites
recommended by HEMS and their respective
barangays are: Don Juan Actub Lluch Memorial School (Pala-o and Hinaplanon),
Ubaldo Laya D. Memorial Central School (Ubaldo Laya), Iligan City East High
School (Sta. Filomena, San Roque and Upper Hinaplanon) and Luinab Elementary
School (Luinab). The existing facilities, Mortel said, were school buildings
which were supposedly for children and were intended for use during school
hours and not for overnight stays.
Mortel added that besides tasks concerning
“rehabilitation and structural integrity,” civil, sanitary and chemical
engineers were also tasked to check whether the water contain traces of
chemical contamination. “They recommended regular monitoring of the poso negro
and other sources of water because the water system was destroyed,” she said. Water
availability varied, according to the report: “In Juan Actub Lluch Memorial
School, the ratio is one 350mL bottled
water per person per day,” while in Sta. Filomena, the locales said that water
is so adequate that “some evacuees use bottled water to wash their hands,” in
Luinab, however, bottled water is only given to children.
Besides sustainable source of drinking water, other “expressed
needs of the community” that the group mentioned were permanent shelters, jobs,
comfort rooms, megaphones, displacement and psychosocial support. “They have psychosocial
support for different groups: the victims, the children, the community and the
responders,” said Mortel. She added that like the survivors, even the
responders needed to cope because they “get burnt out, too and needed
debriefing.” Other than therapy for the traumatized is the primary
recommendation of the public health group: “adopt a camp management protocol
that emphasizes a clear command post and information center that is coordinated
with the Operation Center.”
Among other recommendations cited by the report are as
follows: develop a more coordinated relief effort; develop risk communication
messages to different publics; provide health promotion activities; develop
capacity building programs; conduct a physical and microbilogical testing of
water supply; provide more water purifiers; monitor the distribution of
drinking water; monitor the status of comfort room septic tanks and siphon them
frequently; encourage waste segregation; and organize a university disaster
response team with competencies on: nutrition; maternal, newborn and child
health; communicable diseases; non-communicable diseases including mental
health; water sanitation and hygiene; health services; pharmaceuticals; and
mass casualty management.
Psychosocial
impact
The report stated that in
their visit to Iligan City, they found
7,447 individuals in the evacuation
centers, of which 999 were five-year
olds. Besides chronic illnesses and medical disorders that were already endemic
in the area prior to Sendong, the medical group said the problem of “suddenly-orphaned
children,” and “ensuring the safety of
these children,” required therapy . As
Erich Fromm points out in his essay “The Influence of Social Factors in Child
Development,” “Mental illness is always a sign that basic human needs are not
being satisfied; that there is a lack of love, a lack of reason for being, a
lack of justice.” Had there been a health infrastructure strong enough to
protect them, and education that prepares them for such a situation, the
children wouldn’t have had to suffer mentally and physically.
As Rural Missionaries of the Philippines-Northern
Mindanao Sub-Region’s (RMP-NMR) call goes, “Climate Justice Now! Change, not
Charity!” Other than the medical, the need for psychosocial help was a manifestation
of injustice. Evidences of neglect left indelible marks on the lives of the
affected communities, and perhaps, even the generations that shall follow. As
Laing wrote, “Only experience is evident. Experience is the only evidence.
Psychology is the logos of experience. Psychology is the structure of the
evidence.”
The ruin brought about by Sendong has never been
experienced by Iligan before, so they were not prepared, according to Mortel.
She added that some people who train for disasters cannot help other people
because they themselves are victims. Mortel said that among the things the
psychosocial group noted was the need to clean the area to relieve the people
of the memories of the disaster. Dr. Anselmo Tronco and Dr. Carlo Paolo Castro
prepared the psychosocial group report dated December 28, 2011. According to
their report, Tronco observed that “reminders of disaster such as fallen trees,
debris, mangled cars, have not been sufficiently cleaned up.” Castro noted that
the people’s “perceived needs” are “still basic needs like food, clothes,
underwear, detergent soap, tooth paste, and utensils for their homes” and that,
at least in Digkilaan, the people “feel frustrated that local government in the
delivery of relief goods have not been felt in their community” thus making
them “very appreciative of the response from outside of their community.”
“I noticed that the people have their own way of coping,”
said Mortel. She said that people make use of “markers,” probably approximating
that their family members died. Preparing a few hand-picked flowers and crumbs
of bread for their departed loved ones serve as their outlet, their expression
of grief, according to Mortel. “These (rituals) are actually for the living.” Categorized
as defence mechanisms, Laing wrote, that “psychoanalysis describes a number of
ways in which a person becomes alienated from himself.” Citing “repression,
denial, splitting, projection, introjections” as examples, he added that these
mechanisms are “often described in psychoanalytic terms as themselves ‘unconscious,’
that is, the person himself appears to be unaware that he is doing this to
himself.”
One of the problems Tronco and Castro identified is the
absence of “long term mechanism for the management of the psychological and
psychiatric sequelae of the disaster,” while among the strengths they noted
are: organization and partial implementation of a psychosocial-spiritual
program by the local planners together with volunteers; and planning of a
psychosocial program for caregivers. The report also noted that there is a “direct
link with the regional head of the psychosocial programme for region X (Dr.
Benson Go, a UP-PGH alumnus) for Sendong.” The report stated that, in
Digkilaan, farmers “were already forward looking, planning the rehabilitation
of their homes/community with an appreciation that outside help is needed, but
they have to be the ones to mobilize themselves” and people “have enough to eat
and food has not been a problem for the last 11 days.”
Tronco and Castro listed their recommendations: “1.
Sustain the relationship between UP System and local disaster response teams
(evacuation center managers, and eventually resettlement teams). 2. Identify
training needs for teachers and local health workers, who are commonly the
first responders in disaster and take care of survivors. 3. A consistent
schedule of relief efforts and a clear plan on the rehabilitation (participated
in by the community, local government unit, and other stake holders) are needed
to possibly allay anxiety, fears and sense of lost among other members of the
community. 4. There is a need for rituals for grieving and healing for the
people.”
General
prescription
Though the situation in
Iligan was as bad as having a 1:50 to 1:100 toilet-person ratio (the ideal is
1:20, the public health group said), grave conditions already existed even
before the deluge. The Aquino government did not stop at slashing the budget
for basic social services which include health and education; it also vetoed
the disaster preparedness calamity fund in 2011. Kabataan Partylist Rep.
Raymond Palatino said that Aquino and his cabinet should be held accountable
for “criminal neglect.” Though UP Padayon has expressed its long-term
commitment “to finish what it started” and help came nationwide, the victims of
Sendong are not mere victims of Mother Nature.
These aforementioned “expressed needs of the community”
noted by public health group are indeed basic needs—decent homes, employment,
food, communication and education. Dr. Giovanni Tapang of Advocates of Science
and Technology for the People (AGHAM) includes the reduction of poverty, “one
of the most important determinants of vulnerability to disasters,” in his “Top
7 ways to reduce disaster risk.” Other suggestions from Tapang include the improvement of our disaster response plans,
having proactive warning systems, cancellation of the operations of corporate
logging firms and mining companies, stopping the liberalization of mining, a moratorium on the construction of
coal-powered plants—and the institution of a nationwide emergency response
system. “We can emulate Cuba in its storm preparations,” said Tapang.
In Weathering the
Storm, Oxfam America said that the
“United Nations Development Program and the International Federation of the Red
Cross and the Red Crescent Societies have repeatedly (cited) Cuba as an example
for other countries to emulate in risk reduction” despite its being “a small
and poor country whose geographical location gives it a high and recurrent risk
of hurricanes.”
The report noted qualities that “emerge as significant
and proven risk reduction measures:” (1) Universal access to services; (2)
Policies to reduce social and economic disparities; (3) Considerable investment
in human development; (4) Government investment in infrastracutres; and (5)
Social and economic organization. Cuba’s 95.9% literacy rate that Oxfam noted
in 2004 and the 0% child malnutrition that the United Nations Fund for Children
confirmed in 2010 are important factors in risk reduction measures.
In an interview with the
UP Forum, Cuban Ambassador to
the Philippines H.E. Juan Carlos Arencibia Corrales said that whenever there is
a hurricane, they deal with it as if
they were on a war footing. “Our comprehensive system works like a clock—a
military clock, taking the preventive measures to protect human life. If we
have one casualty, it is a loss for us.”
We also have a local model when it comes to disaster
management. “The people (of Bicol) have the consciousness, so they would not need
to be pushed (to evacuate),” said Mortel, pertaining to the routine of
Bicolanos during disasters. The public health group reported that “it is
noteworthy to point out” the “extensive experience” on disaster preparedness of
the Albay medical group. “They were familiar with disasters, which is why they established
a warning system in Bicol,” said Mortel. According to her, they knew when to
evacuate, and which household goes to what evacuation center. She added that
they were so organized that they have assessed the situation, established methods
wherein they are seemingly on “autopilot” upon hearing warning signals.
Another model Mortel cited was Japan, which documented
the turn of events during the Kobe earthquake. She said that there is a museum
dedicated to the victims of the earthquake, with video documentation of the
personal experiences of the victims and simulation of how people went through
the earthquake, complete with furniture that let visitors feel different
intensities as indicated in the Richter scale. “There is a combination of
technical information and human interest,” added Mortel. She said that Japan
also provided evacuation centers and relief operations; strengthened the
structure of their buildings as a result of their assessment; launched
intensive education campaign; and quickly rehabilitated because “the people are
willing to help.”
Mortel said that we need to help people “understand what
the risks are, what the importance are and what to prepare; to develop risk
communication; and” to launch education campaigns. She added that people shall
also be aware of “related health conditions like leptospirosis, measles and
chickenpox” that arise from the situation. She said that hygiene, water supply
and toilet facility shall also be monitored. According to Mortel, the medical
team indicated that, there were already existing illnesses, but among those
that could be acquired in the evacuation camp are diarrhea, influenza, and
chickenpox. She said that they remedied the situation through vaccination, but
ideally, “it should have been done before, during the schedule of the children.”
The data provided by UP Padayon, Oxfam America, AGHAM and
other concerned groups only show that we
(except the Albay team which we may also opt to emulate) still have a long way
to go in responding to disasters. With thirteen out of eighteen river basins
having no flood warning system, as ABS-CBN reported, and the government spending P1.25 per capita for
health and P6.55 for our education daily, as reported by Bulatlat , we would
need “a serious overhaul of our climate change and other environmental laws
that have not qualitatively done anything for the improvement of our
communities’ climate resiliency,” said Meggie Nolasco of Kalikasan People’s
Network for the Environment (KPNE) in a
press statement.
Illnesses and deficiencies, whether medical,
psychological or social, have root causes we have to engage and eventually
eradicate, if we want all-encompassing societal sanitization.
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