“Walang gamot sa OA,” my friend joked after I narrated, in between severe coughs, my painstaking journey from the University Health Service (UHS) to the nearest local pharmacy.
A seemingly chronic dry cough, persistent headache, and intermittent fever have befallen me in the past weeks. I have tried all possible ways to tend to my sickness. I believed in a supreme being again, prayed and manifested my illness away, and even submerged myself in water therapy.
Yet nothing seemed to be working. So I dragged myself to the UHS, only to be prescribed a handful of medications that I know for a fact I can’t afford with my allowance. I was also already warned that some of the medicines there, which have yet to be available in the UHS pharmacy, are quite expensive.
With P200 and a dream, I proceeded to another pharmacy nearby. Heartbroken by the cost of the prescribed antibiotic, I decided to forego the prescription and spend the remaining money I had on buying vitamins. Upon asking the pharmacist how much a vitamin B tab would cost, he replied, “three fifty po.”
I clarified whether that P350 was for an entire pack already. No, he said, that amount is for each tablet. I had to pretend I was going to look for other items before I bolted out with neither my vitamins nor my prescription.
The middle class is just one hospital bill away from poverty, so they say. But at that point, I felt like I was just one medicine purchase away from being impoverished.
It was only after I narrated this to my friend that I realized the pharmacist meant three pesos and 50 centavos per tablet, not P350. Still, could I really be blamed for that—as my friend kindly emphasized–OA reaction? It was easy for me to be swayed by the fear that each vitamin tablet was that expensive because of my past experience with pricey medications.
When I was still a kid, I would pay a visit to our nearest hospital at least once a month because of my asthma. It would be followed by our routine stop at the pharmacy where we would buy Ventolin nebules and other medications.
Then comes my mother’s usual lamentation over how expensive medicine is, straining our already tight monthly budget. As a response, my father would jokingly tell my mother that a funeral would be way costlier if we didn’t immediately address my asthma.
But I know that even we had it better. I could not say the same for a lot of other Filipinos reeling from the expensive prices of medicine in the Philippines, opting to merely wait and let time heal all of their illnesses. Even the passage of the Cheaper Medicines Law did not sufficiently address the inaccessibility of medicine in the country. Folks can only allot very little of their earnings to medicine when their already meager income has to be spent on rising costs of food, education, and transportation.
There is only so much we can endure—only so much that our manifestations, prayers, and water therapy can allay. And so we must prescribe to the state not only a remedy to the high costs of medicine but the ultimate cure to the virus of inaccessibility: robust support to our health care system, including the provision of affordable medicine for all.
For now, I will return to the pharmacy and hopefully come home with vitamin B in my pocket and OA virus out of my system. ●
