DOH: Phl needs to up testing capacity

The Philippines needs to improve its testing capacity should another pandemic come, an official from the Department of Health (DOH) said Thursday.

DOH Epidemiology Bureau supervising health program officer Faith Caitlyn Valdez recognized during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic that there was a challenge in terms of detection and collection of data.

"I think mayroon kasi tayong limited testing capacity nung nagsimula yung pandemic. So hopefully, if may bagong kaso na dadating or disease na makaharap ng spread of cases, yung number on is makapag-establish agad tayo ng way to detect the cases," Valdez said during the first day of Engaging Media for Health Literacy conference.

"Second, we need to collect. So mayroon dapat tayong ready na information system to collect our detected cases para mayroon tayong way to analyze, interpret, and then makapag-provide tayo ng prevention and control measures," she added.

The Health official also cited the need for digital transformation.

"Kasi prior, lagi tayong paper-based form. So matagal din yung pag-akyat sa national level ng datos natin (Because prior, we always have a paper-based form. So it also takes a long time for data to reach national level)," Valdez said.

"So through our information system na hopefully ma-digitalize natin yung mga paper-based form to web-based na pag-report natin para mas mabilis yung pag-akyat ng data (So through our information system we can hopefully digitalize our paper-based forms to web-based reporting so that data can be uploaded faster)," she added.