PhilHealth reminder: Members can avail of DOTS package

Philippine Health Insurance Corp. President and CEO Dr. Eduardo Banzon on Sunday reminded its members that PhilHealth offers outpatient financial support for the Directly-Observed Therapy Short Course or DOTS package treatment for tuberculosis amid reports that the disease continues to kill 75 Filipinos a day.

 

"PhilHealth pays for the entire six-month treatment, including the diagnostic work-up, consultation services and drugs provided upon enrollment in the DOTS," said Banzon in a news release.

 

This reminder comes in the wake of a National Statistical Coordination Board Millennium Development Goals Watch report in which, instead of decreasing, the country's "prevalence associated with TB" actually increased over the last two decades from 246 to 273 per 100,000 population. 

 

Also, the World Health Organization’s latest Report on Global TB Control ranks the Philippines seventh worldwide in TB incidence after India, China, South Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

 

The Philippines has pledged to achieve the Millennium Development Goals set by United Nations members of “zero prevalence associated with TB by 2015.”

 

In light of this, Banzon said, "We are absolutely determined to help lessen the human suffering associated with TB, the sixth leading cause of illness and death in the country." 

 

He goes on to say that PhilHealth members and their dependents with confirmed pulmonary and extra-pulmonary TB may enroll for DOTS treatment through any of the more than 800 private and public health facilities nationwide.

 

Banzon said that in 2011, PhilHealth subsidized around P23 million in the treatment and care of 10,822 members and their dependents who underwent the DOTS treatment for TB.

 

In DOTS, the patient gets an uninterrupted supply of drugs, the intake of which is supervised by either a family member or a health worker.  The treatment outcome is also monitored. — DVM, GMA News