The Department of Health (DoH) Saturday renewed its call for Congress to approve proposed amendments to Republic Act 7183 (Firecracker Act) to bolster regulation of the sale, manufacture, distribution, and use of firecracker and pyrotechnic devices every year during Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.

The call was made after firecracker-related injuries during the Yuletide celebrations reached close to 600 all over the country, although lower compared to last year’s 702.

The new figure included 29 cases of stray bullet victims and one watusiingestion case.

Dr. Yolly Oliveros of the DoHNational Center for Disease Prevention and Control (NCDPC) said the department had earlier forwarded to Congress its proposed amendments to expand its reach in regulating the use, sale, and manufacture of firecracker and pyrotechnic devices.

Among the recommendations were to increase the negative list of firecrackers to include even the seemingly harmless ones, ensure the safety of local workers engaged in manufacture of fireworks, banning of residential use of firecracker by designating firecracker zones, and engaging other agencies such as the Bureau of Customs (BoC) in the campaign against smuggled firecracker.

“On our part, we feel there is no such thing as illegal or legal firecracker because all are illegal,’’ said Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.

“I believe our lawmakers know what to do. It has to be done in multi-pronged approach because of economic implications. There needs to be safety nets,’’ Duque added.

RA 7183 regulates the sale, manufacture, distribution, and use of fireworks devices. It allows the sale, use and manufacture of firecracker, and pyrotechnic devices such as baby rocket, bawang, small triangulo, pulling strings, paper caps, El Diablo (labintador), watusi, Judah’s belt, sky rocket (kwitis), and sparklers such as luces, fountain, jumbo regular, and special, mabuhay, Roman candle, trompillo, airwolf, whistle device, and butterfly.

In its regular surveillance update, the DoH recorded that many of the 208 who suffered burns used “picollo,” considered a harmless firecracker. The others were burned by kwitis (72 cases), luces (43 cases), 5-star (27 cases), and whistle bomb (25 cases). The DoH said that most of those injured this year were males and children.
The youngest case was a two-month-old and the oldest was a 75-year-old man.

At least 453 of those injured had blast/burn injuries without amputation, 39 had blast/burn injuries with amputation and 78 had eye injuries.

Duque earlier acknowledged that the his department’s scare tactics showing mangled limbs and hands to discourage use of firecrackers and people’s cautious use of fireworks contributed to the continued decline in the number of firecracker-related injuries in the last five years.

He said the DoH will be more aggressive next time in its campaign against firecracker use by showing victims’ gory pictures using electronics or mobile billboards along major routes, among others.

“As long as there is one firecracker injury, it will not be a success for us. But the low injuries this year is itself a manifestation of political will,’’ said Duque.