Santiago returns to campaign trail, says anticancer pill working

Presidential candidate Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday at her hometown in Iloilo after a month-long absence to undergo treatment for her cancer. FRANCES MANGOSING/INQUIRER.net

ILOILO CITY — Presidential candidate Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago returned to the campaign trail at her hometown on Wednesday after over a month of absence to undergo treatment for cancer.

“The medicine seems to be working. I’m weaker than normal, but certainly I can go around,” she told reporters.

Santiago, who was diagnosed with advanced stage of lung cancer in 2014, earlier said she was in remission.

The senator appeared to be in better health compared to her six public appearances since her campaign launch. She could walk without assistance and was even carrying her handbag as she entered the nearby hotel to prepare for her campus tour.

Last month, Santiago announced that she will be taking a short break from the campaign trail to undergo a clinical trial for an anticancer treatment that would have cost her half a million pesos every three weeks.

READ: Santiago to skip Comelec debate to try new anticancer pill

The senator last appeared in public on March 4 at the Our Lady of Fatima University in Valenzuela.

Wednesday’s event at the University of the Philippines in Iloilo was also the third time she appeared publicly with running mate Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. since the campaign launch on Feb. 9. The two last appeared as a tandem on Feb. 14 at Ynares Sports Pasig.

Santiago is an alumna of the university, where she graduated with a degree in Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, magna cum laude, in 1965.

Santiago has consistently lagged behind in surveys while Marcos dominated the latest results of Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia.

But she dismissed these surveys, saying that nobody believes these things anymore.

“When they are given a questionnaire, wala ang pangalan ko,” she said. JE

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