The Leaders for Health Program (LHP), a sustainable work-based and community-based program was recently established by Pfizer, in partnership with the Department of Health (DoH) and the Ateneo Graduate School of Business (AGSB), to address the present healthcare challenge of the country.
There is now an interest within the business sector to strengthen its involvement in addressing the Millennium Development Challenge on Health. Recently, Philippine Business for Social Progress through the leadership of Edgar Chua, Country Chairman of Shell Companies in the Philippines and CEO champion for MDG Health Cluster, organized a CEO forum on the Millennium Development Goals at the Manila Polo Club, Makati City.
CEOs from different corporations gathered to collectively address the country’s health issues. The forum highlighted the success of LHP in developing the capacity of local stakeholders in developing, implementing and sustaining effective and efficient health service and delivery mechanism at the municipal level.
In Septemeber 2000, 189 leaders of the United Nations’ member-states ratified the Millennium Declaration affirming their commitment to address poverty as a pressing global development challenge. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that resulted from this unified the international community with an expanded vision of development. It is one that vigorously promotes human development as the key to sustaining social and economic progress in all countries, and recognizes the importance of creating a global partnership for development.
The eight MDG-identified aims are: To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, increase incomes, improve the quality of life, ensure access to basic services such as health and water, protect the environment, guarantee access to primary education and build partnerships between sectors and nations to overcome hindrances to development in poor countries.
A major setback in the country’s public health care system is its ineffective management, which results in poor delivery of this basic service to the public. At the moment, health programs receive the least amount of government spending, and 40 percent of Filipinos live and die without ever seeing a doctor.
To date, LHP is Pfizer Philippines’ biggest community program. Pfizer president and country manager Gerry Bacarro said: "Through LHP, Pfizer reaches out to more than 900,000 medically underserved Filipinos in 48 poor municipalities to give them access to quality healthcare everyone deserves."
