Events
PAPA signs Petition for Pro-Health, Pro-Poor Tax Reform for Acceleration inclusion
The Philippine Ambulatory Pediatric Association, Inc is one of the healthcare organization which signed the Petition for Pro-Health, Pro- Poor Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN). We are one in urgently petitioning President Rodrigo Duterte and our leaders in the Senate to use the comprehensive tax reform package (HB5636) to addresss the two most significant health problems in the country today: toabacco use and malnutrition.
Different organizations representing the health sector and civil society gathered last August 8, 2017 at Annable's Tomas Morato.
Petition for Pro- health, Pro Poor TRAIN
We, the undersigned leaders of organizations representing the health sector and civil society, urgently petition President Rodrigo Duterte and our leaders in the Senate to use the comprehensive tax refrom package (HB5636) to address the 2 most important problesms in the country today: Tobacco use and Malnutrition.
There are 14.5 M Filipino smokers and 1.2 M more are expected by 2022, mostly from the lowest 2 quintiles of wealth. Tobacco exposes these smokers to 49 life-threatening diseases including stroke, heart attack, lung cancer and chronic lung disease, resulting in 150,000 deaths a year and 210 B pesos in annual losses. In addition, tobacco predisposes to a major health problem, illicit drug use. Of 4.5 M Filipinos who have ever tried drugs, 1.5 M used tobacco as the gateway.
14 million Filipinos experienced involuntary hunger in the last quarter of 2016, and 12.5 M suffer chronic undernutrition. This is the underlying cause of persistent health problems such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and tubeculosis, which remain among the top 10 cuases of death in Filipinos.
To address these pressing health problems, we urge that the comprehensive tax reform bill be converted to a version that is overwhelmingly pro-poor. We stronly appeal the following ammendments:
1. We urge that taxes on tobacco be increased by 60% in 2018,, and by 10% yearly thereafter with the following goals:
a. To decrease the number of current smokers from 14.5 to 13.5 million
b. To reduce annual financial losses of at least 210 B pesos from smoking related diseases
c. To augment funds for universal healthcare, government infrastructure projects, and crop diversification by tobacco farmers
d. To institute tobacco control as a preventive measure against use of illicit drugs
2. We further propose that ALL income from taxes on sugar sweetened beverages be used to finance measures to reduce the cost of healthy food to increase accessbility, especially for the poor and near poor, and to curtail the potential increase in the incidence of undernutrition.
We believe these amendments wil transfomr the proposed tax reforms into a package that is clearly pro-poor. We commit to strongly support a version of this bill that includes these provisions