The plan covers the towns of Real, Infanta and General Nakar (REINA), the municipalities which were damaged by typhoons Yoyong and Winnie last year. Damage to REINA was estimated to reach almost 80 percent of REINA’s annual GDP, or P790.7 million economic damages.
"The purpose of this plan is to help the victims of the Quezon Province floods in December 2004. Through a comprehensive study such as this, the locals will be able to see what needs to be done to recover fast and re-enter mainstream economic national activities," said Dr. Noel Juban, the principal investigator and head of the team who conducted the study and developed the rehabilitation plan. He is also an associate professor at the College of Medicine in the University of the Philipppines Manila.
The plan, which identified 353 items for rehabilitation in the health sector, includes rehabilitation of barangay health stations, building a new hospital, replacement of destroyed equipments, sanitation of water supply and improvement of delivery of health programs and services to the people of REINA.
According to Juban, only 16 percent of the plan was completed with 60 percent ongoing and 23 percent inactive or at proposal stage. He said the major obstacles that hinder implementation of the proposed plan of action include technical, budget and personnel support. Among these, personnel support surfaced as a major problem.
"Because of continuous brain drain, it is very important to train health officers in the barangays. These volunteer health workers are our first line of defense in situations like this," said Juban.
The investigating team discovered that health problems in REINA were issues that are already existing even before the typhoons devastated the towns. These include proper delivery of health programs and services.
"These concerns were just aggravated by the floods. Right after the typhoons, the diseases that surfaced were communicable. We had cases of cholera because the water system was destroyed," said Juban.
Reccommendations in the plan address the issues that REINA, especially the concerns of General Nakar, is facing. These problems include transportation, possible flood recurrence, malaria, and food supply. The plan also reccommends the formation of different committees to respond to calamity.
Emergency and Humanitarian Assistance’s (EHA) technical officer Dr. Arturo Pesigan showed a risk map revealing all the possible natural disasters like earthquakes and typhoons that may affect specific locations in the country. He discussed that through the help of different agencies, different disasters can be predicted at a certain degree.
