TAMA, a good law gone wrong

By Herbert Vego

WRONG timing, I thought while rushing to a hospital on the day I was supposed to be attending a Christmas party. The culprit: a bout with vertigo.

If you are one of the lucky ones who have not experienced vertigo, it is a deceptive feeling of movement, as in an earthquake, where everything around sways, even though it doesn’t.

The doc prescribed two kinds of drugs.  I got well on the third day, and well enough to attend the Christmas party of our social group, Antiqueños of Iloilo.

A fellow Antiqueño remarked that I could have turned to herbal medicines like boiled ginger, turmeric and ginkgo biloba.

Too bad, the TAMA law has not achieved its “mission” to the hilt.

TAMA stands for the Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act (Republic Act No. 8423) which the late former President Fidel Ramos signed into law in 1997.

As proposed by the late Senator Juan Flavier, TAMA provided for the creation of the Traditional Medicine Authority (TMA) which would be responsible for the systematic and scientific development of alternative and traditional medicine in the Philippines. It was intended to complement, not displace, conventional medicine practice.

Later, in November 2004, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared the month of November the Traditional and Alternative Health Care (TAHC) Month via Presidential Proclamation No. 698.

It has been 20 years since November 2004, but we have yet to witness the Department of Health invigorate TAMA (R. A. 8423).

When President Ramos signed Flavier’s bill into law 27 years ago, he predicted that it would minimize the “sakit sa bulsa” of the poor patients.

Unfortunately, the law has hardly taken off. No thanks to the hostility of the Philippine Medical Association (PMA), which had attempted to block its passage on the pretext that it would degenerate, rather than advance, medical science.

Of course, they made no mention of “generous” multinational drug makers who sponsor foreign trips for favored Filipino physicians.

The Traditional Medicine Authority (TMA) – I hope I am wrong — has reneged on its mandate to provide the administrative framework for the protection of the herbal medicine industry from both local and foreign threats.

And so, on their own, small local drug companies took the initiative of synthesizing indigenous medicinal plants into tablets, capsules and syrup, such as lagundi, for cough and asthma; tsaang gubat, an antispasmodic; akapulko, antifungal; and sambong, diuretic; yerba buena, antipyretic; and ampalaya, anti-diabetic.

Applications for approval of scores of folkloric plants have remained unacted by Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The vegetable malunggay, for instance, when encapsulated, still bears the FDA warning, “No approved therapeutic claim.”

But it is widely promoted by nutritionists as effective against hypertension, arthritis, scabies and constipation, among others.

By trial and error, hard-up individuals have proven for themselves the wisdom of going back to natural medicine.

The failure of the law to right the wrong image of traditional medicine as quackery need not go on forever.

The physicians who swear by the Hippocratic Oath should remember that it was a Greek physician and the world-acknowledged “father of medicine,” Hippocrates (460-357 BC), who said, “Let your food be your medicine.”

-oOo-

DOODS PREDICTS MORE-ILECO JOINT VENTURE

THERE must be a reason why my friend Leopoldo “Doods” Moragas – a native of Miag-ao, Iloilo – believes that, rather than compete with MORE Power, the Iloilo 1 Electric Coop. (ILECO 1) would team up with it through a joint venture agreement.

It would then be unnecessary for Rep. Janette Garin to push through with her bill to grant a franchise to MORE Power to energize her turf, the First District of Iloilo province.

Moragas – who now lives with his family in Seattle, Washington – used to be senior assistant vice president of the Philippine National Bank (PNB), hence an authority on the status of public utilities.

But I would rather not elaborate to avoid being misunderstood, since Moragas had run against the congresswoman’s husband, Miag-ao Mayor Richard Garin.