Hundreds of Philippine mums in show of support for breast-feeding

Yahoo – AFP, August 5, 2018

Philippine mothers take part in the event to promote breastfeeding
(AFP Photo/NOEL CELIS)

Manila (AFP) - Hundreds of Philippine mothers simultaneously nursed their babies in public on Sunday, some of them two at a time, in a government-backed mass breastfeeding event aimed at combating child deaths.

About 1,500 women, some of them wearing tiaras and superhero T-shirts, sat on the vast floor of a Manila stadium and let their babies suckle to the beat of dance music.

"Breastfeeding is love. It is difficult, but we do it for love," said Abegirl Limjap, a pregnant 38-year-old property manager in a "Super Mom" superhero costume as she nursed her two boys, one aged five and the other 11 months.

The annual event aims to draw public support for a government campaign to get more mothers to switch to breast milk from infant formula, organiser Rose Padua told AFP.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund recommend that children be given breast milk within the first hour of birth and be exclusively breastfed for their first six months.

Globally however, three in five babies are not breastfed early, putting them at higher risk of death and disease, the two UN agencies said in a report earlier this year.

Twenty-seven children out of every thousand died before the age of five in the Philippines in 2016, according to WHO data.

WHO and UNICEF estimate about half of Filipino babies were initiated into early breastfeeding in 2013, barely changed from 46 percent in 2003.

"It's an empowering moment," said first-time mother Joyce Balido, 29, as she cradled her four-month-old girl at the mass breastfeeding event.

"It was very difficult to establish a milk supply at first. I am sleep-starved but I committed myself to have my daughter exclusively breast-fed," added Balido, an engineer.

Sixty-one other mass breastfeeding events were held in other Philippine cities over the weekend, said Padua, the event organiser.

She said the country was on course to beat last year's attendance of 4,775 nursing mothers in 25 events.

Thousands beg Australia not to deport autistic Filipino boy

Yahoo – AFP, 27 April 2015

A 10-year-old autistic Filipino boy makes an emotional plea for permission to stay

in Australia, as tens of thousands called for him not to be deported (AFP Photo/
Greg Wood)

A 10-year-old autistic Filipino boy made an emotional plea Monday for permission to stay in Australia, as tens of thousands called for him not to be deported despite the potential cost of his condition.

Tyrone Sevilla, who arrived in Australia from the Philippines legally as a two-year-old with his mother Maria Sevilla, has written to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton asking to stay.

The letter, which reads: "Dear Mr Dutton, can I stay in Australia please... Tyrone," was the first one her son had written and probably the most important he would ever write, Maria said.

Tyrone Sevilla holds a sign he wrote with a

 message for Australia's Immigration Minister

 Peter Dutton asking to stay in the country (AFP 

Photo/Maria Sevilla)

"With our help, he managed to sit down and write all those letters on the page. For him to sit down and do that, it's a different Tyrone," she told AFP.

Maria Sevilla said the letter showed her son, who does not normally communicate by speaking, understood the family's situation after they were denied visas due to the probable cost of providing for Tyrone's care.

"I think he knows what's going on," she said.

Maria, who has been in Australia since 2007 on a variety of visas, said she and her son had been denied permission to stay longer because they were labelled a "burden" to Australian taxpayers.

The Sevillas presented a petition, signed by more than 120,000 people, to Dutton's electoral office in Brisbane in the hope that the minister would give compassionate consideration to their cause.

"Today is make or break, whatever we do today will help with our case," Maria, a registered nurse who works in a Queensland hospital, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"Australia is our home. Because we have been here for nearly eight years and we've been assimilated in the community.

"Our immediate family are here, which is our support.... I have my work here and I can actually provide for Tyrone."

The family said Tyrone did not speak Filipino or have any close relatives remaining in the Philippines, with his grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt and cousins all living in the Australian city of Townsville.

Call for common sense

Dutton said the immigration department was preparing a report for him on the case, and in the meantime a bridging visa -- which typically covers a 28-day period -- would be issued for the mother and son.

"In this case we need to apply common sense," he told the ABC.

"We're a compassionate society and we want to help families in difficult situations."

"There's no fear that anybody is going to be deported, there will be a bridging visa which will be issued which is standard practice in these matters," he added.

Dutton stressed that such decisions were always hard and emotional, but the immigration department must consider the costs of conditions such as autism on the provision of services.

"It is a difficult area because we have thousands of applications... but we have to be sensible about the number to whom we should provide that support," he said.

Dutton said a decision would likely be made within weeks, and it would take into account the fact that Sevilla was employed and could look after her son.

Australia takes a hard line against asylum-seekers arriving by boat, refusing them resettlement in the country even if they are found to be refugees and sending them instead to Pacific states.

But Maria Sevilla, who said she pays tax and has private health insurance, said she was overwhelmed by the support she had received from the Australian community.

"I am hoping that he (the minister) will see that there are a lot of Australians that are really supporting us," she said.

"I am still hoping that we will have a positive outcome."

World's first academy for humanitarian relief to be launched

Humanitarian Leadership Academy to train aid workers from over 50 countries in organising rapid responses to disasters and emergencies

The Guardian, Julian Borger Diplomatic editor, Sunday 22 March 2015

Local residents receive humanitarian aid in the city of Debaltseve, Ukraine.
The world’s first academy for humanitarian relief will train aid workers in
responding to disasters and emergencies. Photograph: Sokolov Mikhail/
Sokolov Mikhail/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

The world’s first academy for humanitarian relief is to be launched, aimed at training 100,000 aid workers from over 50 countries in organising rapid responses to disasters and emergencies.

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy, launching on Monday, is a response to the growing number of humanitarian crises around the world, driven by climate change and conflict, combined with a severe and worsening shortage of people with the skills necessary to coordinate the large-scale response required in the critical first days to prevent mass casualties.

The HLA is being set up by a global consortium of aid organisations with initial £20m funding from the UK Department for International Development, out of a target of £50m. The Save the Children charity has paid the startup costing and is hosting the academy’s hub in London.

Further centres will open in Kenya and the Philippines later this year, and by 2020 the plan is to have ten training centres around the world, which would offer both classroom and virtual training for the surrounding regions, in mobilising the rapid response in resources and manpower needed in the wake of a disaster.

Jan Egeland, a former UN head of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, will be the academy’s first chairman. He said the initiative “may revolutionise the entire humanitarian sector”.

“Investment in a new and better trained generation of humanitarian workers closer to where we find the greatest needs will bring development and sustainability to many of the world’s most fragile communities,” Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said.

Last year witnessed a record number of severe global humanitarian emergencies and the highest number of refugees the world has seen since the second world war. 50 million people were forced to flee their countries.

  

Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children, said: “If we are to save more lives in some of the toughest places in the world we need to train and support local people themselves to become the humanitarian workers and volunteers of the future. The academy will do this by bringing together an extraordinary and unique coalition of actors to train and share best practice, transforming the humanitarian system.”

The idea behind the establishment of ten national and regional centres around the world is that each should be able to tailor responses to crises in terms of local conditions and local culture. Aid experts have said that previous attempts to increase local and regional capacity to react to large-scale emergencies have foundered because they were seen as impositions of practices developed far away.

The plan is for each centre to provide a common pool of knowledge, the latest technology and examples of best practice, as well as solid career structures for humanitarian workers, with internationally recognised certification for successive levels of achievement, recorded in ‘humanitarian passports’. The end result should be to expand the pool of people available in every region to manage the humanitarian response in the first 72 hours of an emergency.

“This is potentially one of the most transformational projects I have been involved in,” said Gareth Owen, Save the Children’s director of emergencies, who has been working on the academy project since 2007. “It is based on the recognition that many studies of humanitarian disasters and emergencies point to leadership and decision-making as the critical factor. Really by now we should have a global capacity that we can draw on that is far greater and more diverse. We haven’t invested enough in people on the ground.”

Owen said that climate change was adding to the relentless annual toll of humanitarian crises: “We used to have a big natural disaster about once a decade and that has come down to one every two or three years.”

Global funding for emergency relief has largely stagnated. Owen said the $20bn (£13bn) spending on the response to humanitarian emergencies is a third of the amount the world spends on yoghurt, for example, and that there is no comparison with the $1.5tn spent on arms.

“The Humanitarian Leadership Academy will help create a faster and more effective disaster response system by empowering local people in the most vulnerable countries to be the first responders after a disaster strikes,” Justine Greening, the secretary of state for international development, said. “The high quality training and expertise delivered by this academy will mean humanitarian responses not only provide immediate, life-saving relief, but also help build a more secure and resilient world.”

Related Article:

Ebola report slams slow WHO response

Conjoined twins from Philippines successfully separated in Taiwan

Want China Times, CNA and Staff Reporter 2015-03-15

Doctors work to separate the twins at the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital
in Hualien, March 13. (Photo courtesy of the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital)

Doctors in Taiwan's eastern county of Hualien on Friday successfully separated a pair of conjoined twin sisters from the Philippines who shared a liver.

Ludy De Gusman, mother of the 15-month-old twins, burst into tears of relief and gratitude when the operation finished after almost eight hours at the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital's branch in the county.

Gusman said she was very grateful to the medical team for helping to give the sisters normal lives.

Prior to the surgery, Gusman said, she had shut herself and her daughters off from the outside world and remained confined to their home for a year so that the people in her village would not laugh at them.

Lee Ming-che, head of the hospital's department of surgery, commented on the length of the operation, saying that he and his team took extra care to reduce the amount of blood loss, as previous experience has shown them that surgery involving the liver causes the most severe blood loss.

The twins–Jennelyn Mendoza De Guzman and Jerrelyn Mendoza De Guzman–were taken to Taiwan for the surgery after Kao Jui-ho, head of the Hualien hospital, met them during a free clinic in the Philippines' Bautista municipality last November.

Volunteers of the Hualien-based Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Foundation in the Philippines helped to raise funds for the operation and the twins arrived in Taiwan Jan. 9 for preliminary care, which included tissue expansion for skin grafts and liver reconstruction.

Chen Pei-jung, the deputy head of the hospital, who organized the team that carried out the surgery, said the procedure was easier than previous operations on conjoined twins as the liver was the only organ shared by the sisters.

The operation is the third the Hualien hospital has conducted on conjoined twins.

The first took place in 2003 and the second in 2010.

Filipino worker in coma to be sent home with Taiwanese aid

Want China Times, CNA and Staff Reporter 2015-03-11

Reynaldo's mother receives the donation in Chiayi, March 10.
(Photo/Chiayi County Social Affairs Bureau)

Filipino worker Rosauro Jamee Reynaldo Lutaw who fell into a coma as a result of heart disease will be flown home March 15, thanks to donations from local Taiwanese people and the government.

Reynaldo, 25, had been working in a factory in Minhsiung in Chiayi county since his arrival in Taiwan in September 2012. He collapsed suddenly on Nov. 30, having shown no previous symptoms of illness.

A thorough examination found that he has congenital heart defects of which he himself was unaware. Although doctors managed to save his life with emergency surgery, Reynaldo fell into a deep coma and was transferred to a nursing home for medical care after 25 days at the hospital.

His mother, who came to Taiwan last December, has been taking care of him at the nursing home.

Since his condition was caused by heart defects rather than an occupational hazard, Reynaldo's medical costs are not covered by his insurance policy. Owing to the local language barrier, his mother wanted to take him back to his home in the Philippines for further treatment.

However, Reynaldo has had difficulty in meeting his medical costs in Taiwan, not to mention the cost of his flight home.

After learning of his plight, the Chiayi County Social Affairs Bureau asked the Ministry of Labor Affairs for urgent aid of NT$100,000 (US$2,900), and managed to raise another NT$180,000 (US$5,700) from local charities, including the Chiayi Do Good group.

Witnessed by officials from the Social Affairs Bureau, the funds were given by representatives of the donors to Reynaldo's mother Tuesday to help them return home.

Murderers wander with machetes at idyllic Philippine prison

Yahoo – AFP, Cecil Morella, 22 June 2014

Inmates from the mininum security compound walk unescorted to their place
 of work at Iwahig prison in Puerto Princesa, Palawan island, June 6, 2014 (AFP
Photo/Ted Aljibe)

Iwahig (Philippines) (AFP) - One hundred convicts armed with machetes wander through a vast prison without walls in one of the Philippines' most beautiful islands, a unique approach to reforming criminals.

Two token guards with shotguns slung on their shoulders relax in the shade nearby as the blue-shirted group of inmates chop weeds at a rice paddy at the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm on Palawan island.

But Arturo, who is 21 years into a life sentence for murder, has no plans to escape, preferring to keep his chances of an eventual commutation or even a pardon.

Prison superintendent Richard

Schwarzkopf (R) along with penal

supervisor Jacinto Regal (2nd R)

 speak with inmates from the minimum

security compound at Iwahig prison in 

Puerto Princesa, Palawan island, June 6,

2014 (AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe)

"I don't want to live the life of a rat, panicked into bolting into a hole each time a policeman comes my way," the 51-year-old inmate, whose full name cannot be used in keeping with prison regulations, told AFP.

Surrounded by a thick coastal mangrove forest, a mountain range and a highway, the 26,000-hectare (64,000-acre) Iwahig jail is one of the world's largest open prisons, more than two times the size of Paris.

A single guard sits at its largely ceremonial main gate, routinely waving visitors through without inspection.

A shallow ditch, but no walls, is all that separates the 3,186 prisoners from the outside world.

A mere 14 kilometres (nine miles) away is Puerto Princesa, a city of 250,000 people and a top tourist destination as the gateway to an island famed for stunning dive sites, a giant underground river system and beautiful beaches.

A steady stream of local and foreign tourists visit Iwahig's quaint, pre-World War II prison administration buildings and a handicrafts shop, which is manned by inmates who have made the items on sale.

A few hundred hectares of the land is devoted to rice paddies, which sit picturesquely on either side of a fire-tree-lined dirt road. Ducks, goats, cattle and egrets feed quietly on newly harvested plots.

Fish ponds, coconut plantations, corn fields and vegetable plots are scattered across the prison, although the bulk of the land remains covered by forest and mangroves.

Penal colony's harsh history

US colonial rulers established Iwahig in 1904 for political prisoners and Manila's worst inmates, seeking to isolate them in what was then a sparsely inhabited frontier about 600 kilometres (370) miles from the nation's capital.

Prisoners were used to clear virgin rainforests for farming, which would in turn encourage migration from the archipelago's more populous areas.

After the Philippines won independence post-World War II, those who had served out their term were also given the option to clear and own up to six hectares of land.

Up until the 1970s, the prisons had much tougher security than today, with chain gangs of inmates the norm.

Prison guards watch as inmates from the

 medium security compound work on a rice

 field at Iwahig prison in Puerto Princesa,

 Palawan island, June 6, 2014 (AFP Photo/

Ted Aljibe)

Most other jails in the Philippines continue with brutal conditions, with inmates packed beyond capacity in dingy, airless cells and having to take turns sleeping.

A fresh breath of reform

But at Iwahig, and four smaller penal farms in other provincial areas, authorities have sought to take advantage of the open spaces to create conditions that encourage the rehabilitation of inmates.

"This (farm work) serves as their preparation for getting back into a free society once they are released. It helps them adapt back to life as free men," said prison superintendent Richard Schwarzkopf.

Iwahig's inmates mostly come from Manila's main Bilibid prison, a far smaller facility that holds about 22,000 convicts and which requires periodic prisoner transfers to ease the over-crowding.

Instead of the squalid, sardine can-like cells of Bilibid, night quarters for most of Iwahig's inmates are lightly guarded buildings that are bigger than a basketball court, surrounded by barbed wire rather than concrete or metal walls.

About 50 lucky minimum-security inmates live full-time in straw-and-bamboo huts scattered along the penal farm, assigned to guard the crops, tractors and other implements.

There are just 150 maximum-security inmates who must work indoors and remain in a more tightly secured environment.

However, murderers and other previous maximum-security prisoners can qualify for the outdoors if they have served at least half their sentence and have a record of good behaviour. A life sentence is regarded as a 40-year term.

Schwarzkopf said the modern approach to penology had been a success. He said less than 10 percent of Iwahig's prisoners became repeat offenders after being released, lower than the national average.

Inmates from the medium security compound work on a rice field at Iwahig

prison in Puerto Princesa, Palawan island, June 6, 2014 (AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe)

The jail has also had no recent history of riots or mass breakouts.

Schwarzkopf said there had been just one breakout since he took over leadership of the prison in 2012: involving four inmates serving terms for murder, attempted murder and car theft.

Three of them were swiftly captured, according to Schwarzkopf, although he declined to say which one of the four remained at large.

Prominent Puerto Princesa lawyer Herminia Caabay said she also regarded Iwahig's "humane" approach to inmates as a success.

"Riots are a sign of depression brought about by prison conditions. These usually happen at places where people are kept behind bars," Caabay said.

Convicted drug dealer Gamay, 39, said he treasured his time working the land as it helped him keep his mind off his wife, who had left him for another man.

"It stops me thinking bad things," said the stocky, tattooed former fish vendor, who began his 30-year sentence in Manila's Bilibid but was transferred to Iwahig seven years ago.

Gamay said living at Iwahig had allowed him to dream and prepare for a successful life back in society.

"The work experience helps you learn to stand on your own two feet... I want to go back to selling fish and save up to build my own house," he said.

Related Article:

Philippines CPDRC Inmates Gangnam Style (Video)

Philippine top court approves controversial birth control law

Yahoo – AFP, 8 April 2014

File photo taken in August 2012 shows people rallying for the passage of

 a bill providing greater access to birth control in Quezon City, Manila (AFP

Photo/Jay Directo)

Manila (AFP) - The Philippines' highest court approved Tuesday a controversial birth control law that supporters said would transform the lives of millions of poor Filipinos, in a stunning defeat for the powerful Catholic Church.

"The RH law is not unconstitutional," Supreme Court spokesman Theodore Te told reporters, announcing a ruling that struck down more than a dozen petitions against the reproductive health law by church groups.

The law requires government health centres to hand out free condoms and birth control pills, as well as mandating that sex education be taught in schools.

File photo taken in August 2012

shows people rallying for the

passage of a bill providing greater

access to birth control in Quezon

City, Manila (AFP Photo/Jay

Directo)

The law also requires that public health workers receive family planning training, while post abortion medical care is also legalised.

The Catholic Church had until Tuesday led a successful campaign for more than 15 years against any form of family planning laws in the Philippines.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino defied church pressure and signed the law into effect in December 2012, but the Supreme Court quickly suspended it after church groups filed petitions arguing it was unconstitutional.

"This monumental decision upholds the separation of church and state and affirms the supremacy of government in secular concerns like health and socio-economic development," legislator Edcel Lagman, the principal author of the law, said immediately after the verdict.

"A grateful nation salutes the majority of justices for their favourable ruling promoting reproductive health and giving impetus to sustainable human development."

The Catholic Church, which counts over 80 percent of the country's 100 million population as members, had led street protests denouncing the law as "evil", and at one point in its opposition campaign threatened Aquino with excommunication.

'Civil disobedience'

One of its hardline opponents and a petitioner to the court, former senator Francisco Tatad, said allowing the law to take effect could force Catholics into an open revolt.

"This means civil disobedience at the very least, actual revolt at the most extreme," Tatad wrote in a commentary in the Manila Times newspaper on Tuesday.

"Some of us will want to defy the power of the devil and die as martyrs, if need be, in the only cause that gives us a chance to fight for something much bigger than ourselves."

Church leaders have helped lead two revolutions that toppled unpopular presidents in recent Philippine history, and they continue to insist they have a right to influence the parliamentary and legal branches of government.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino at Parliament House in Kuala

Lumpur on February 28, 2014 (AFP Photo/Modh Rasfan)

Another example of its enduring influence is that the Philippines is the only country where divorce remains illegal.

Nevertheless, many people across the sprawling archipelago have embraced less conservative views in recent decades.

A recent survey carried by the respected Social Weather Stations polling group said about 84 percent of Filipinos agreed that the government should provide free family planning options such as contraceptives.

It said 72 percent were "in favour" of the law.

Women's rights groups and other supporters of the law say it will be a powerful tool in fighting poverty and cutting the birth rate of 3.54, one of the highest in the world.

More than a quarter of the population live on the equivalent of 62 cents a day, according to the government, and experts say there is an urgent need to provide free reproductive medical services that the poor can not otherwise afford.

More than a third of the capital's 14 million population live in sprawling slums, according to a 2010 World Health Organization report, and many of them do not have access to proper sanitation, let alone health centres.

According to the British medical charity Merlin, which has backed the passage of the law, 14-15 mothers die daily in the Philippines in complications related to child birth.

Related Articles:

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…  3 - Longer Life is Going to Happen, But…

Here is one that is a review. We keep bringing it up because Humans don't believe it. If you're going to start living longer, there are those who are frightened that there will be overpopulation. You've seen the way it is so far, and the geometric progression of mathematics is absolute and you cannot change it. So if you look at the population of the earth and how much it has shifted in the last two decades, it's frightening to you. What would change that progression?

The answer is simple, but requires a change in thinking. The answer is a civilization on the planet who understands a new survival scenario. Instead of a basic population who has been told to have a lot of children to enhance the race [old survival], they begin to understand the logic of a new scenario. The Akashic wisdom of the ages will start to creep in with a basic survival scenario shift. Not every single woman will look at herself and say, "The clock is ticking," but instead can say, "I have been a mother 14 times in a row. I'm going to sit this one out." It's a woman who understands that there is no loss or guilt in this, and actually feels that the new survival attribute is to keep the family small or not at all! Also, as we have said before, even those who are currently ignorant of population control will figure out what is causing babies to be born [Kryon joke].

Part of the new Africa will be education and healing, and eventually a zero population growth, just like some of the first-world nations currently have. Those who are currently tied to a spiritual doctrine will actually have that doctrine changed (watch for it) regarding Human birth. Then they will be able to make free choice that is appropriate even within the establishment of organized religion. You see, things are going to change where common sense will say, "Perhaps it would help the planet if I didn't have children or perhaps just one child." Then the obvious, "Perhaps I can exist economically better and be wiser with just one. It will help the one!" Watch for these changes. For those of you who are steeped in the tradition of the doctrines and would say that sounds outrageously impossible, I give you the new coming pope [Kryon smile]. For those of you who feel that uncontrolled procreation is inevitable, I encourage you to see statistics you haven't seen or didn't care to look at yet about what first-world countries have already accomplished on their own, without any mandates. It's already happening. That was number three.….”

Tainted Horsemeat Eyed in Five Deaths in Philippines

Jakarta Globe – AFP, Apr 02, 2014

Raw horsemeat served in Japan. (Wikimedia Commons)

Cotabato, Philippines. Five people are believed to have died from eating tainted horsemeat in the Philippines while as many as 60 may have consumed it, a local official said Wednesday.

Four horses died from unexplained causes and their meat was given away to residents in the largely rural southern province Sultan Kudarat on March 25, Henry Albana, the province’s social welfare officer said.

Many fell ill after eating it, with the town of Senator Ninoy Aquino particularly affected, Albano added.

“The owners of the horses butchered them, then they distributed the meat to the residents. One of the owners was the first victim [to die after eating the meat],” said Albano. “Provincial officials are trying to locate all the others who ate the horsemeat. I estimate that as many as 60 may have eaten it.”

Albano said some locals believed the horses died from eating grass newly-sprayed with pesticides. Health officials have yet to establish what happened.

Horsemeat is not commonly eaten in the Philippines but people in impoverished rural areas often resort to unusual meat sources such as field rats or frogs.

Agence France-Presse

'Miracle' baby born in Philippine typhoon rubble

Google – AFP, Jason Gutierrez (AFP), 11 November 2013

Baby Beatriz Joy is born at a makeshift medical center in the storm damaged

central Philippine city of Tacloban on November 11 2013 (AFP, Jason Gutierrez)

Tacloban — Emily Sagalis cried tears of joy after giving birth to a "miracle" girl in a typhoon-ravaged Philippine city, then named the baby after her mother who went missing in the storm.

The girl was born Monday in a destroyed airport compound that was turned into a makeshift medical centre, with her bed a piece of dirty plywood resting amid dirt, broken glass, twisted metal, nails and other debris.

"She is so beautiful. I will name her Bea Joy in honour of my mother, Beatriz," Sagalis, 21, whispered shortly after giving birth.

A medic tends to Emily Sagalis shortly after

 she gives birth inside a destroyed building

 in the central Philippine city of Tacloban

on November 11 2013 (AFP, Jason Gutierrez)

Sagalis said her mother was swept away when giant waves generated by Super Typhoon Haiyan surged into their home near Tacloban city, the capital of Leyte province which was one of the worst-hit areas, and she has not been seen since.

More than 10,000 people are believed to have died in Leyte, and many hundreds on other islands across the central Philippines, which would make Haiyan the country's worst recorded natural disaster.

But, in the most tragic of circumstances, Bea Joy restarted the cycle of life.

"She is my miracle. I had thought I would die with her still inside me when high waves came and took us all away," she said, as her teary-eyed husband, Jobert, clasped the baby and a volunteer held an IV drip above them.

The husband said the first wave that came carried their wooden home in the coastal town of San Jose many metres inland, washing all of the family outside.

He said the entire community had been washed away, with the once picturesque area replaced by rubble and the bloated remains of people and animals.

"We are supposed to be celebrating today, but we are also mourning our dead," Jobert said.

He said it was God's will that he found his wife floating amongst the debris.

They were carried away for what felt like hours until the water subsided, and they found themselves sheltering in a school building where other mud-soaked and injured survivors had huddled.

Emily Sagalis, 21, lies exhaused on a debris

 filled floor at a makeshift medical facility

 after giving birth in Tacloban, on November

11 2013 (AFP, Jason Gutierrez)

The couple and their surviving neighbours subsisted there until Monday morning only on bottles of water they found among the debris. Jobert said he knew that his wife was about to give birth any day, but no help or aid had come.

"She began labour at 5:00 am (Monday) so we had to walk several kilometres before a truck driver hitched us a ride," he said.

The young military doctor who attended to her, Captain Victoriano Sambale, said the new mother had already broken her waters by the time the couple stepped inside the building, and then developed bleeding during the delivery.

"This is the first time we have delivered a baby here. The baby is fine and we have managed to stop the bleeding of the mother," he said.

However, he cautioned doctors were extremely concerned about potential infections that could easily be caught amid the unsterile conditions, with the medical team almost powerless now to help her.

"Definitely the mother is still in danger from infection and sepsis (septicemia). So we need to give her intravenous antibiotics. Unfortunately we ran out of even the oral antibiotics yesterday," Sambale said.

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Philippine Elite Fight Ageing With Stem Cell Therapy

Jakarta Globe - AFP, Alexandra Gemperle, November 6, 2013

In a picture taken on October 27, 2013, Cynthia Carrion-Norton gestures as
she speaks during an interview at her home in Manila. (AFP Photo/Jay Directo)

Manila. Cynthia Carrion-Norton flits high-heeled around the Philippine capital with energy levels belying her years, thankful for a controversial treatment she highly recommends to fellow sixty-somethings.

Carrion-Norton, 66, a member of the Philippine Olympic Committee and a former undersecretary for medical tourism, credits her vitality to adult stem cell therapy.

“The day I got the therapy I went to a dinner party and everyone told me: ‘Cynthia, you’re blooming!” Carrion-Norton told AFP.

The procedure involves harvesting the patient’s stem cells from their own fat and injecting them into their blood, which she likened to being injected with intravenous fluid in the arm.

In a country where many elite are obsessed with anti-ageing, wealthy Filipinos are shelling out between $12,500 and $18,000 per session of stem cell therapy in the belief it will improve their overall health and make them look younger.

Rich businessmen and public officials — mostly male — are the most eager customers, according to Florencio Lucero, a doctor in Manila who said he started performing adult stem cell therapy in 2006.

“They do it because they want to work longer,” Lucero told AFP.n”And then they tell their wives or girlfriends.”

Lucero said Filipinos had been receiving anti-ageing stem cell treatment since the 1970′s, often flying abroad to do so.

Thai medical entrepreneur Bobby Kittichaiwong says he has a lucrative business catering to the Filipino elite, who pay $20,000 to visit his Villa Medica clinic in Germany for a more controversial form of stem cell therapy.

The clinic harvests cells from unborn sheep to be injected into a patient’s muscles, known as fresh cell therapy, and Kittichaiwong said 400 Filipinos visited last year.

“After 14 days, the patient’s skin will glow and their digestive and immune systems will improve,” he told AFP.

Among Villa Medica’s high-profile clients is former president Joseph Estrada, 76, who has staged a remarkable political comeback in recent years after being forced to stand down from the nation’s top job in 2001 because of corruption.

“Now I sleep better, my knees are no longer a problem, my skin has been radiant like this ever since,” reads a testimonial from Estrada in a Villa Medica brochure.

A spokeswoman for Estrada, who was this year elected mayor of the nation’s capital, confirmed he had stem cell therapy treatment at Villa Medica.

Another remarkable, elderly politician who has cited stem cell therapy as one reason for his enduring career is 89-year-old Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, who was defense minister during the reign of dictator Ferdinand Marcos a generation ago.

Villa Medica also cites Enrile as one of its patients.

However the use of stem cells from sheep has attracted much criticism, with Samuel Bernal, a professor of medicine at the University of California, among the many Filipino doctors to warn of its dangers.

“When animal cells are transmitted to humans, it could be fatal,” Bernal said at a recent forum on stem cell therapy in Manila.

Kittichaiwong insists fresh cell therapy is perfectly safe.

“What you eat everyday is foreign material, but you don’t get rejection,” he said, adding that Villa Medica planned to soon open a clinic in the Philippines.

‘The medicine of the future’

Amid this debate, Carrion-Norton wants to promote the less controversial adult stem cell therapy in the Philippines, and set up her own clinic.

“I don’t want only the rich to be able to do it,” she said. “I want everyone that needs it to be able to do stem cell therapy, because this is the medicine of the future.”

However, treatments at Norton’s clinic will start at about $17,000.

“It’s still expensive, and will remain so unless a lot of people get into the business,” said Norton.

“That’s why I want more people to know about it and not be afraid of it.”

Stem cell therapy for health and cosmetic purposes is popular in China, India and many other Asian countries. However, like the Philippines, laws and enforcement are in large part yet to catch up with the medical advances.

The Philippine Department of Health is scrambling to regulate local stem cell therapy practices amid a chaotic and often dubious boom in the industry.

In an effort to tap into the much larger markets of the Philippines’ lower and middle classes, advertisements for more affordable products and treatments claiming to use stem cells have been springing up.

Stem cell pills claiming to make customers “feel and look at least seven years younger” can be bought through Filipino websites for just 9,000 pesos ($200).

Cheap and top-end beauty centers also offer a range of treatments, some not involving qualified health professionals.

Human stem cell procedures can indeed offer life-saving treatments for patients with leukemia, lymphoma and some solid tumors, according to the American Medical Association.

The US-based International Society for Stem Cell Research also said the procedures for human, or adult, stem cell therapy had “tremendous potential” for treating a range of human afflictions.

But it warned clinics around the world were offering “unproven treatments” for many illnesses that posed “very real risks of developing complications.”

The lack of regulations in the Philippines makes it an ideal setting for medical practitioners to “prey on the desperation of sick people,” Dr Anthony Leachon, vice president of the Philippine College of Physicians, told AFP.

Health Secretary Enrique Ona said his department was planning to come up with a list of doctors and institutions accredited to practice stem cell therapy in the Philippines.

But the government is clearly eyeing the potential economic benefits of stem cell therapies.

“We look at this issue with a certain degree of liberty to make sure that our hospitals that are carrying out good stem cell therapy practices can continue them,” Ona said.

“Hopefully, in the future, the Philippines can even claim to be a center of stem cell therapy in this part of the world, if not even internationally.”

Agence France-Presse