PhilHealth offers alternate family planning package

WITH birth control implants temporarily banned by the Supreme Court, poor Filipino women can turn to the P3,000-contraceptive program the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) is making available to its members beginning this month.

In a circular signed last month, the state insurance firm said the package is aimed at broadening the access to “long acting reversible” family planning methods by Filipino women.

The package covers consultation and counseling, professional fee, and use of facility, medicine and supplies plus the contraceptive implant and follow-up services, said PhilHealth.

But it noted that only contraceptive implants included in the Philippine National Formulary would be used for the PhilHealth package, adding that healthcare providers should receive training in contraceptive implant techniques from the Department of Health’s licensed trainers.

A contraceptive implant is a small flexible tube, the size of a toothpick, placed subdermally in the upper arm. It releases progesterone hormone similar to the natural progesterone produced by women in their ovaries and inhibits ovulation. The implant is highly effective up to three years.

According to PhilHealth Circular 038-2015, members under the indigent programs sponsored, overseas Filipino and iGroup are entitled to the package within their membership validity period.

Benefit entitlement will be subject to the “three months within six months” qualifying contributions among members in the formal economy, the informal sector and self-earning individuals and iGroup program whose validity period had expired, said the circular.

Househelp enlisted in PhilHealth may start availing themselves of the package from the time of their enrollment and payment of premiums. “It will remain valid as long as premium contributions are regularly paid,” said the insurance firm.

The package may be utilized only once every 730 days, or two years, and the procedure should be done in accredited hospitals, primary care facilities, ambulatory surgical clinics, lying-in clinics and birthing homes by licensed and trained physicians and midwives.

The DOH earlier planned to make the birth control implants available in health centers but the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) in June last year barring the health agency from pushing through with its program.

The TRO prevented the government from procuring, selling and distributing Implanon and Implanon NXT pending its final disposition of an appeal by the Alliance for the Family Foundation Philippines Inc. to permanently ban the product for its supposed “abortifacient” side effects.

The health agency also faced a P1-billion budget cut for family planning services this year.