Maguindanao flooding displaces 7,000 families

FLOODED SCHOOL. A school in Datu Montawal, Maguindanao, is submerged in floodwaters following heavy rains Tuesday (Aug. 9, 2022). All the town’s 11 barangays were submerged in floodwaters, prompting the local government to distribute relief packs to some 7,000 affected families in the area. Photo courtesy of Datu Montawal MDDRO via Philippine News Agency

By Franz R. Sumangil, Manila Times

MORE than 7,000 families have been displaced by flooding that hit Datu Montawal town in Maguindanao province last Tuesday, August 9.

Balumol Kadiding, municipal disaster officer of Datu Montawal, on Thursday said most of the flood victims have moved to safer grounds.

"However, many of them are home-based and are just waiting for the water to recede," Kadiding also said, adding that no casualty was reported.

All the town's 11 barangay (villages) were flooded after the Kabacan River overflowed because of heavy downpour in Bukidnon and North Cotabato.

Montawal, a town with a population of over 37,300 per 2020 census, is beside the Kabacan River and also near the Malitubog-Maridagao water channels.

Kadiding said flooding has been a recurring problem of Datu Montawal as the town served as a catch basin of river water from upstream or from North Cotabato and Bukidnon.

The water from the river flows toward the Maguindanao marshland.

Kadiding said ongoing relief operations will cushion the impact of the calamity on affected families.

He added that the town disaster council is set to convene anytime to consider recommending the declaration of a state of calamity.

Meanwhile, the provincial government of North Cotabato conducted a series of relief operations over the weekend for flood victims in the towns of Kabacan and Pikit.

In two flood-affected villages in Pikit, 559 families in Silik village were given relief aid while 90 families in Dalingaoen village received food packages and were also visited by Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza.

Sittie Eljori Antao-Balisi, Cotabato first district board member, assured the flood victims that the provincial government will keep on extending public service to residents of the province.

Silik village chairman Benzar Mangansakan expressed his gratitude to Mendoza for the assistance given by the provincial government.

Floods ruin farms in 3 Ifugao villages

Mangansakan said the relief aid greatly helped the residents as their primary source of food is adversely affected by the flooding.

The relief campaign was spearheaded by the Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office in cooperation with the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office and Pikit Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office.

Sen. Revilla files bill for movie industry

The Philippine movie industry is indeed one of the industries severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. It became more difficult to produce and market Filipino movies due to the restrictions in place thereby affecting the film producers, movie theater operators, and patrons. And in spite of the recent reopening of cinemas in the country, many are still hesitant to watch films inside movie theaters due to the long stay inside an enclosed venue.

This challenge is compounded by the existing decline of movie ticket sales in the country due to the various online platforms that evolving technology made available.

Aware of these difficulties, actor and current Senator Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr. filed Senate Bill No. 28 which aims to revive the Philippine movie industry by providing fiscal incentives to the proprietors, lessees, and operators of theaters and cinemas.

The bill removes the different national and local taxes imposed on the said industry such as income tax, excise tax, value-added tax, and amusement tax.

Drought, floods linked to infectious diseases

By Associated Press

Researchers looked through the medical literature of established cases of illnesses and found that 218 out of the known 375 human infectious diseases, or 58 percent, seemed to be made worse by one of 10 types of extreme weather connected to climate change, according to a study in Monday's journal Nature Climate Change.

The study mapped out 1,006 pathways from the climate hazards to sick people. In some cases, downpours and flooding sicken people through disease-carrying mosquitos, rats and deer. There are warming oceans and heat waves that taint seafood and other things we eat and droughts that bring bats carrying viral infections to people.

Doctors, going back to Hippocrates, have long connected disease to weather, but this study shows how widespread the influence of climate is on human health.

"If climate is changing, the risk of these diseases are changing," said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Doctors, such as Patz, said they need to think of the diseases as symptoms of a sick Earth.

"The findings of this study are terrifying and illustrate well the enormous consequences of climate change on human pathogens," said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an Emory University infectious disease specialist, who was not part of the study.

"Those of us in infectious diseases and microbiology need to make climate change one of our priorities, and we need to all work together to prevent what will be without doubt a catastrophe as a result of climate change."

In addition to looking at infectious diseases, the researchers expanded their search to look at all types of human sicknesses, including non-infectious illnesses such as asthma, allergies and even animal bites to see how many maladies they could connect to climate hazards in some way, including infectious diseases.

They found a total of 286 unique sicknesses and of those 223 of them seemed to be worsened by climate hazards, nine were diminished by climate hazards and 54 had cases of both aggravated and minimized, the study found.

The new study doesn't do the calculations to attribute specific disease changes, odds or magnitude to climate change, but finds cases where extreme weather was a likely factor among many.

Study lead author Camilo Mora, a climate data analyst at the University of Hawaii, said what is important to note is that the study isn't about predicting future cases.

"There is no speculation here whatsoever," Mora said. "These are things that have already happened." One example Mora knows firsthand.

About five years ago, Mora's home in rural Colombia was flooded — for the first time in his memory water was in his living room, creating an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes — and Mora contracted Chikungunya, a nasty virus spread by mosquito bites. And even though he survived, he still feels joint pain years later.

Sometimes climate change acts in odd ways. Mora includes the 2016 case in Siberia when a decades-old reindeer carcass, dead from anthrax, was unearthed when the permafrost thawed from warming. A child touched it, got anthrax and started an outbreak.

Mora originally wanted to search medical cases to see how Covid-19 intersected with climate hazards, if at all. He found cases where extreme weather both exacerbated and diminished chances of Covid-19. In some cases, extreme heat in poor areas had people congregate together to cool off and get exposed to the disease, but in other situations, heavy downpours reduced Covid spread because people stayed home and indoors, away from others.

Longtime climate and public health expert Kristie Ebi at the University of Washington cautioned that she had concerns with how the conclusions were drawn and some of the methods in the study.

It is an established fact that the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has led to more frequent and intense extreme weather, and research has shown that weather patterns are associated with many health issues, she said.

"However, correlation is not causation," Ebi said in an email. "The authors did not discuss the extent to which the climate hazards reviewed changed over the time period of the study and the extent to which any changes have been attributed to climate change."

But Dr. Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard School of Public Health, Emory's del Rio and three other outside experts said the study is a good warning about climate and health for now and the future. Especially as global warming and habitat loss push animals and their diseases closer to humans, Bernstein said.

"This study underscores how climate change may load the dice to favor unwelcome infectious surprises," Bernstein said in an email. "But of course it only reports on what we already know and what's yet unknown about pathogens may be yet more compelling about how preventing further climate change may prevent future disasters like Covid-19."

Concern for those who have less in life

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

LET’S remember always that God has a special concern for those who have less in life, like the simple and the weak, the sick and disabled, the children and the poor. And it gives him much pain if we would scandalize them, either through our culpable neglect of them or, worse, by leading them to sin.

This truth of our faith is somehow highlighted in that gospel episode where Christ preached about the need to be like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven, the care not to despise the little children, and his intent always to look for the lost sheep, regardless of the cost and effort involved. (cfr. Mt 18,1-5.10.12-14)

Let’s take note of what Christ once said about the kingdom of heaven. He went as far as to say that it is for little children precisely because of their simplicity: “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me. For the kingdom of heaven is for such.” (Mt 19,14)

We need to devise an interior mechanism, more spiritual than material, to keep ourselves like children even as we grow in worldly knowledge and skills, and prone to thinking that we can already live by ourselves, independently of God.

This mechanism can include anything that fosters our presence of God all throughout the day, the practice of rectifying our intention and relating everything that we do to God. We should feel the need for God always, earnest in our effort to look for him in everything that we do. 

We have to break the barrier of awkwardness and incompetence in this regard. We actually have the means. What’s missing is our will to use this mechanism.

And lest we think simplicity is naivete, and gullibility, let’s remind ourselves of what our Lord said: “Be wise as serpents and simple as doves.” (Mt 10,16) Simplicity would not be true simplicity if it does not come with cleverness and shrewdness. We just have to find ways of how we can blend these two apparently contrasting qualities together.

And if we are truly Christian, we should have true and abiding compassion toward everyone, especially the poor and the needy. But we have to understand that compassion should have universal coverage. It should not be limited to the sentimental aspects of things, nor to relieving the economic and material needs of people alone.

It should cover the whole range of human needs in their proper order of importance, foremost of which is our need for God. We have to learn to distinguish between the pressing and precious needs of man, and to cope with the tension that sometimes arises in our effort to put these two kinds of human needs together.

In this concern, we have to understand that the poor may not be the ones who are economically poor. They can be the richest, the most educated, the most famous and powerful, but who happen to be farthest from God. They can turn out, in that context, to be the poorest of the poor, the lost sheep that have strayed farthest from God.

They pose as the most difficult challenge in our duty to show compassion, to reflect in our life God’s love for all. Are we in the first place aware of this reality? Are we up to the challenge? Do we know how to tackle this problem?

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

𝐃𝐝𝐎’𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐩 𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤

 

Being one of the province’s economic driver that attracts a big number of tourist visits, Davao de Oro’s tourism wellness loop bounces back from the unfavorable changes brought by the pandemic over the past two (2) years. 

Recently, the Provincial Government of Davao de Oro through the PAO-Tourism Division headed by Senior Tourism Officer Christine Dompor, visited some of the tourism destinations of the province together with the Provincial Administrator Fatima Montejo. The team conducted a site inspection to assess and measure possible interventions from the provincial government to further intensify the service quality offered by the wellness loop.

The team visited ten (10) tourism facilities on Saturday (August 6, 2022): Bilawa Hot Waterfalls in Brgy. Mainit and Pagkokorowan Gaw Bukanan in Maco, Lake Leonard (Danao) Aqua Eco Park in Brgy. New Leyte, Maco, Tambo Viewdeck+Cafe, Tagbibinta Falls, Maragusan, Maragusan Eco Solid Waste Management Park, Pyalitan Falls, Maragusan, Mt. Patong Sea of Clouds, Angel Farm and Flower Garden, and De Oro Suites in Maragusan.

In Barangay Mainit, Maco, local officials led by Brgy. Captain Michelle Lim welcomed the provincial team led by PA Montejo.  It is where the Bilawa Hot Spring is located and is one of the top earning and mostly visited Community-Based Ecotourism destinations with over 200 coop-members.  Recently, the province was able to have its  10% share of revenue for its three (3) months of operation amounting to PhP600, 000.  

These tourism destinations not only popularized Davao de Oro in the market, but it also served as a gateway for more job opportunities for the locals. Its revamp from the pandemic generated more income-generating revenues and established cooperatives with its local workforce such as farmers, fisherfolks, mountain and boat guides, and caterers.

The team also met with Mayor Angelito J. Cabalquinto of Maragusan, and discussed plans for infrastructure provisions and other necessities in some tourism sites in Maragusan.

Recently, the tourism  division of the province in partnership with the provincial health office conducted a Covid-19 vaccination drive to various tourism facilities to further secure its operations amidst the pandemic. (PAO-IPRD DdO)

PAO- Information and Public Relations Division

4th Flr, Executive Building,

Provincial Capitol Complex

Brgy Cabidianan, Nabunturan

Davao de Oro

15 Luzon provinces notch 'very high' Covid positivity rates

OUCH A child gets a jab against Covid-19 at the Baclaran Elementary School in Parañaque City on Monday, Aug. 8, 2022, as the government prepares for the opening of classes. PHOTO BY MIKE ALQUINTO

By Franco Jose C. Baroña, Manila Times

(UPDATE) FIFTEEN provinces in Luzon recorded "very high" Covid-19 positivity rates, OCTA Research reported on Monday.

The positivity rate refers to the percentage of people found positive for Covid-19 among the total individuals tested.

OCTA Research fellow Guido David said Camarines Sur had the highest jump in positivity, with 48.7 percent on August 6 from 30.3 percent on July 30.

Two other provinces recorded more than 40 percent positivity — Isabela with 47.6 percent and Tarlac with 41.9 percent.

Provinces with more than 30 percent positivity rates were Cagayan (30.5 percent), Laguna (33.2 percent), Nueva Ecija (38.4 percent) and Pampanga (35 percent).

 Provinces with more than 20 percent positivity were Albay (28.2 percent), Benguet (22 percent), Cavite (21.1 percent), La Union (29.4 percent), Pangasinan (25 percent), Quezon (25.1 percent) and Zambales (28.6 percent).

In the National Capital Region, the positivity rate rose from 15.5 percent on July 30 to 17.5 percent on August 6.

The positivity rates in three provinces dipped slightly — Bataan (from 20.8 to 13.2), Batangas (from 15.7 to 15.2) and Ilocos Norte (from 10.4 to 9.9).

The World Health Organization recommends that the proportion of Covid-19 tests coming back positive should be below 5 percent to ensure that the spread of the coronavirus is under control.David said the "prolonged" Covid-19 wave in the country could last throughout the "ber" months, or the last four months of the year.

Netherlands latest to detect 'Centaurus' subvariant

"It started here in the Philippines around June, then July, August, so we should be in our second month already," said David. "But we're not at the peak yet. It's taking longer. Right now, it's looking like it will last up to four to five months, well into the 'ber' months."

David said the lingering Covid-19 wave may be due to other variants.

Another possibility is the waning vaccine immunity, since fewer individuals were getting booster shots.

"Most of them had their vaccines last year and fewer people got their booster shots, so there is waning immunity. Our antibody levels are going down. Then, adherence to minimum public health standards is always important," David said.

Covid-19 positivity in 14 provinces 'very high'

The Philippine Genome Center (PGC) said the Omicron subvariant BA.5 is the "most predominant" sample sequenced in the country in the past month alone.

PGC Executive Director Dr. Cynthia Saloma said the majority or "anywhere above 85 percent" of sequenced Covid-19 samples have traces of the BA.5 subvariant.

"We can probably say that this current wave is really the BA.5 wave in the country," Saloma said, adding that there were only a few cases of BA.2.3 which was the dominant strain last January.

Covid positivity rate 'very high' in five provinces – OCTA

She said that with the dominance of BA.5, several cases of BA.5.2 have been detected.

In the United States and Europe, the dominant subvariant is BA.5.1.

Saloma said that there are no new cases of BA.2.75, which is more transmissible than the original Omicron variant, in the country.

As of August 5, the Department of Health (DoH) has reported 95 new BA.5 cases. Of these cases, 67 were from Davao Region, 25 from Soccsksargen, and one case each from Northern Mindanao, Caraga and the National Capital Region.

This brings the total Omicron BA.5 cases detected to 3,107.

The DoH also reported two cases of the Omicron subvariant BA.2.75 in the country last August 2. The cases were from Western Visayas.

On Monday, the DoH reported that almost 700,000 Filipinos had received their first booster shot under the government's "PinasLakas" campaign.

The DoH launched PinasLakas on July 26, with a goal of boosting 23.8 million Filipinos or 50 percent of the eligible population within the first 100 days of the Marcos administration.

"As of August 6, we have already vaccinated almost 700,000 individuals for the first booster shot, and for the senior citizen, around 43,000," DoH Officer in Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said.

Vergeire said the department was bringing vaccine delivery closer to communities to ramp up booster coverage.

Some of the places being used as vaccination sites are markets, places of worship, workplaces and schools, she said.

LPA spotted off Davao City

By Arlie O. Calalo, Manila Times

A low pressure area was spotted off Davao City by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa).

At the same time, the weather bureau is monitoring an active tropical depression outside the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR).

The LPA was last seen some 530 kilometers east of the city.

Meanwhile, the tropical depression outside PAR was 550 kms north-northwest of Kalayaan Island, Palawan and is almost stationary, Pagasa said.

It had maximum sustained winds of 45 kilometers per hour (kph) and gustiness of up to 55 kph, the weather bureau said.

The LPA is affecting Caraga and Davao Region while the southwest monsoon, is affecting Metro Manila, Ilocos Region, Cordillera Administrative Region, Cagayan Valley and Central Luzon.

The southwest monsoon also brought cloudy skies with scattered rain showers and thunderstorms in CALABARZON (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) and MIMAROPA (Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan).

The rest of the country will have partly cloudy to cloudy skies with scattered rain showers and localized thunderstorms in the next 24 hours, Pagasa said.

DepEd: Enrollment for SY 2022-2023 breaches 16M mark

(DepEd file photo)

by Merlina Hernando-Malipot, Manila Bulletin

Over 16 million learners have already enrolled for the incoming school year, the latest data from the Department of Education (DepEd) showed.

Data as of Aug. 5 from the Learner Information System (LIS) for School Year (SY) 2022-2023 showed that there are now 16,029,252 registered students for the incoming school year.

Region IV-A still has the largest number of enrollees with 2,367,246; followed by the National Capital Region with 1,870,470, and Region III with 1,591,722.

Per grade level, Kindergarten has the most number of enrolled learners with 1,060,138 followed by Elementary (Grades 1 to 6) with 7,376, 586.

There are 5,179,673 enrollees in Grades 7 to 10 (Junior High School) and 2,412,855 learners in Grades 11 and 12 (Senior High School).

DepEd opened the enrollment for public schools on July 25. Enrollment will continue until Aug. 22, 2022, which is also the first day of classes as announced by DepEd.

Meanwhile, DepEd continues to encourage parents and guardians to enroll their children as soon as possible.

To ensure the safety of everyone, DepEd schools are implementing various enrollment methods which include in-person, remote, and dropbox enrollment.

For the Alternative Learning System (ALS), DepEd said that learners can now enroll in-person or online.

In a recent press conference, DepEd recognized that the opening of classes “will not be without challenges.”

Despite this, the agency remains optimistic that these challenges would be addressed by working together.

From Aug. 22 to Oct. 31, DepEd said that schools will be allowed to implement blended learning.

However, all schools offering basic education are expected to have transitioned to five days in-person classes starting Nov. 2, 2022.

The natural and the supernatural

By Fr. Roy Cimagala*

WE have to learn to live in the natural world while pursuing our supernatural goal. This aspect of Christian life is somehow highlighted in that gospel episode where Christ talked about his impending passion, death and resurrection, and proceeded to ask Peter if Christ also should pay taxes. (cfr. Mt 17,22-27)

In that gospel, Christ implied that as the son of God, he ought to be exempted from paying taxes, but so as not to offend the earthly authorities, he decided that he too should pay the tax. Here Christ is showing us how to live naturalness which we have to learn. 

Naturalness has something to do with how to handle our human condition considering what we ought to be and what we are at the moment. Fact is, we have a supernatural goal, nothing less than to be united with God, which we have to pursue in the context of our human and natural world.

Naturalness is about how to mix the spiritual and material dimensions of our life, our personal and social aspects, and other elements in our life that, given the way we are, appear to compete with each other. How to integrate and harmonize them is the task of naturalness.

Naturalness is a very active affair, lived day to day, moment to moment, as we grapple with the continuous flow of our concerns. It’s the front man who does the dirty job of the bigger virtues of discretion, prudence and ultimately charity, the foot soldier who does the hand-to-hand combat, the peddler who does the door-to-door selling.

It has to know when to push and when to pull, what to say and show and what to be quiet about and hide. Obviously, it has to follow a game plan, with a clear goal in mind and a detailed knowledge of all the elements it has to contend with.

It has to know when to be active and when to be passive, when to be aggressive and when to be patient and tolerant. Of course, in our spiritual life, these elements, while initially contrasting, can be blended and lived simultaneously, obviously an effect of grace and our cleverness.

It also has to know how to project oneself to the future, given the data of the present and of the past. It has to learn how to relate history and current events with eternity. It should know how to connect the mundane with the sacred.

Naturalness is strengthened when we deepen in our convictions about our ultimate goal as well as in our continuing observations and growing wealth of experience of passing things.

The secret to blending all these apparently contrasting elements in our life is to pray always. When we keep our conversation with God going, we certainly would know what is proper for us to do at any given moment.

Prayer should be kept alive always and we should just try our best to find the appropriate ways to achieve it amid the changing circumstances of our day and despite setbacks, mistakes, failures and the sins that we may commit along the way.

We have to be wary of our strong tendency to converse only with our own selves or, at least from time to time, with others. We need to talk to God. Without him, there is no way but simply for us to be confused, tempted and eventually fall.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

BEING ON THE RIGHT TRACK?

Very often, we asked ourselves this question. That's normal. That's human.

Even though you didn't get the job I think you're on the right track because you're getting lots of callbacks for interviews.  Don't worry, you'll get a job offer soon.

We're on track for completing the prototype by the end of the month. Looking positively. 

I just had my performance review and my boss said I'm on the right track for a promotion next year. Congratulations. You deserve it.

"Help! I can't finish this algebra equation!" "Calm down and keep thinking, you're on the right track." My mathematics professor mentioned this a thousand times.

Many times we compare our life with a way. We talk about a "human life way". We describe a determined human such as, "He's on the right track (way)". We must make our tracks, but we will  take a path across a rice-field. We learn that there are many ways to solve problems. We also don't want to stand in other people's way. Sometimes we prefer to keep out of someone's way. Sometimes, we already plan to get someone out of our way. It just happened in my surroundings. Most of all, we do try to find the golden middle course. "Hay nako" - that's the hardest task in life!

Many different ways have been offered to us during our whole life. Whole life? I am 69 now. Whole life? Mmmmh, let's wait and see and have a cup of tea! How can we be able to choose the right way? The correct one? Which signs can be trusted blindly? These are urgent and vital questions for all of us, and, during this time, important like never before. In the past traditions and custom demands have been produced our ways unquestionably. Nowadays permanently, constantly and continually we must think about decisions and look for the correct plan - but, more and more alone!

Today's man is like a ship's captain.This ship contains solid iron. The compass needle is no longer able to show the Northern direction as expected, because of the ship's iron inflexible body. You only have one choice: look up to the stars and study their guiding support. A very wise idea by German atom-physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976).

We are all happy and proud while having the perfect means at our disposal. On the other hand, our blindness allows us to intricate and confused destinations in life, aims, goals and objectives. We all know the headlines of our daily life, which always turn us away and distract our views to the stars - means to say: to God.

I am the way - not only a traffic sign or a shepherd without responsibility or a "mailbox-doctor a la Doctor Love. I am the way - the only right way. His deeds colored our fates. Let's keep our eyes open for the most important signs at our way, such as

- Ready to help the unprotected and defenseless weak;

- Struggle for freedom and justice;

- Commitment of peace;

-  Most of all: Love, which doesn't calculate and count - love without measurements, boundaries and limits.

If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say.