COTABATO CITY, Philippines—Catholic Relief Services, a non-government organization that oversees the local government's implementation of the four-year provincial tuberculosis control program with funding support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), closes down this month.
And health workers assigned in Talayan, Maguindanao are saddened by it. "It hurts to know that the CRS office has to fold up so soon while we are still in the process of TB detection and control," said barangay (village) health worker Teng Kasim, whose feeling was shared by other health colleagues.
Speaking in the dialect, Kasim, 27, whose older sister and two toddler nieces died of the airborne-disease in 2002 and 2003, respectively, volunteered to become a village health worker, doing legwork and assisting medical practitioners in the drive to eradicate TB.
"The deaths in the family motivated Teng (Kasim) to volunteer to work as health aide in all TB control-related activities in Talayan," said 25-year old medical technologist Yasser Farid Andal.
"I sent him out to do errand work like gathering sputum samples in Talayan villages," said Andal, who also took charge of Guindulungan, Talitay, Datu Anggal Midtimbang, and Datu Piang towns, all of Maguindanao.
"Like Teng, I, too, feel sentimental knowing CRS and the TB control program has to end," Andal said.
CRS ends its health operations in Maguindanao on September 30.
During the September 3 "Project-end Conference" held in Davao City, chief program evaluator Dr. Jose Hesron Morfe said that from 2005 to 2009, the CRS and another NGO, with the help of local government units in 33 Maguindanao towns, had collaborated in attempting to meet the USAID goal of having to increase TB detection rate from 69 to 75 percent and cure rate from 72 to 85 percent, taking into account nearly 500,000 inhabitants aged 15 years old and above.
The implementing period, according to Morfe, was encouraging when its detection rate of 84 percent surpassed the objective but its cure rate was only 78 percent, not quite meeting the upper target of 85 percent.
Morfe told stakeholders that the program implementation was a success amid constraints posed by the occasional Moro insurgency-related skirmishes, some inaccessible remote villages due to transport problem and bad roads, and the absence of infrastructure and medical equipment.
Luc Picard, CRS country representative, said its contractual operation on health concerns in Maguindanao was worthy of emulation, adding that he would propose a possible extension of the project or another humanitarian mission by USAID in Maguindanao or any other parts of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, considered as one of the poorest in the country.
Dr. Tahir Sulaik, ARMM health secretary, said the USAID-funded health projects in Maguindanao that were coursed through the CRS, also included the child survival program that was successfully launched from 2001-2005.
"This (child survival) and the TB control projects of CRS in Maguindanao had helped reduce the number of disease-afflicted children and adults which we are very much thankful of," Sulaik said.
Founded in 1943 by the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States, the CRS started to operate as an NGO by aiding the resettlement of World War II European refugees.
"Today, CRS is doing humanitarian work in nearly 100 countries around the world, providing not only emergency relief but long-term development programs aimed at breaking the cycle of poverty and helping communities become self-sufficient," said Picard, who regarded the CRS presence in Maguindanao a rare experience worth sharing.
