Bill creating Philippine Center for Disease Control and Prevention sponsored in Senate

The bill, which seeks to create the Philippine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has been sponsored in the Senate plenary.

Senator Pia Cayetano introduced Senate Bill 2505 or the proposed Philippine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Act to the plenary on Wednesday night.

SB 2505 seeks to establish the CDC under the Department of Health. It will act as the technical authority on forecasting, preventing, controlling, and monitoring communicable and non-communicable diseases in the country.

The proposed law aims to adopt a framework that fosters a whole-of-system, whole-of-government, and a whole-of-society approach that would streamline science-based decision-making, especially during public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once established, the CDC shall have the following centers, which will lead and coordinate the agency’s major functions:

-The Center for Health Statistics
-The Center for Surveillance and Epidemiology
-The Center for Health Evidence, and
-The Center for Reference Laboratories.

These centers will be created by reorganizing existing offices and units within the DOH.

“It’s been two years since the country recorded its first COVID-19 case… If there’s one lesson we learned from this pandemic, it’s the importance of being more prepared for other future crises, including the possibility of another pandemic,” Cayetano said.

Cayetano cited data from the Center for Global Development, which indicated that there is a 47–57% chance of another global pandemic as deadly as COVID-19 in the next 25 years.

In his last State of the Nation Address, President Rodrigo Duterte had asked Congress to pass the bills creating a CDC and a virology and vaccine institute.

In July 2021, the House of Representatives had approved on third and final reading its version of the bill creating the CDC and a virology research institute in the Philippines.

Both houses of Congress adjourned their sessions on Wednesday night.

They are set to resume sessions on May 23 or after the 2022 national and local elections.

Until then, all bills that were sponsored will remain pending on second reading. — VBL, GMA News