W

hile almost the entire civilized world is focused on the developing medical crisis brought about by “swine flu,” Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is embarking on more state visits, as if there is no tomorrow and the Philippines is not mired in endemic crises after socioeconomic-and-political crises. She will leave soon on presidential junkets to Egypt and Syria – just after she visited Thailand and Dubai, as accompanied by her congressional allies who are all using their pork-barrel allocations to finance the junkets. She views the homeland and the world with a rose-tinted pair of designer glasses, as she thinks that she cannot do wrong and she is doing alright, if not A-Okay. The diminutive Philippine President has placed herself on a giant pedestal as a leader of international fame and grandeur. Critics of course have dubbed Mrs. Arroyo as a moral midget, if not a delirious dwarf.

Instead of using scarce Philippine-government resources to purchase—for instance—and stockpile enough doses of Tamiflu, an anti-influenza drug, she spends the pesos (and dwindling foreign-exchange reserves) for traveling overseas and in making sure that the military bosses and congressional allies are well paid, well fed like swines and pampered like cows.

* Editor’s Note: Please read a report on Czarina Gloria and her Rasputins in this article, Moral Midgets and Delirious Dwarfs Continue to Rule the Philippines

F ilipino health authorities recently put to death thousands of pigs in the town of Pandi, Bulacan Province, as the hogs were suspected of harboring “swine Ebola.” Wags have blamed the First Family for introducing the “pig-sourced Ebola virus” due to its constant use of pork-barrel funds for its lackeys in the Philippine Congress, the military-and-police generals and local-government officials.

* Editor’s Note: Please read a satirical report on the spread of the Ebola virus in the Philippines, as found in this hyperlink: Pig-Ebola Now in RP and Congressmen Refuse to Accept Malacañang’s Gifts of Ham and “Queso de Ebola”

S ome Filipino-American medical experts believe that annually there are more Filipinos who die from influenza-caused illnesses than the average 36,000 fatalities caused by flu in the United States. The mortality rate of flu-caused deaths in the United States is from 0.24% to 0.96% of the 5% to 20% of the American population that suffers from influenza. But there is a dearth of statistics in the Philippines, especially in the medical field.

According to cynics and critics, the number-one cause of death in the Philippines – from the medical viewpoint – is the “Mona Lisa” syndrome. If readers are not aware of what the syndrome is, please click on this hyperlink, The Philippines: A Land of "Mona Lisas"

And more Filipinos die undiagnosed because of pollution in the homeland, as per this exposé published earlier in this website, Why Many Filipinos Die of Heart Attack in Polluted Manila and Other Philippine Urban Centers

The Philippines is in deep sh_t, as many Overseas Filipinos and their kin and friends in the homeland know. The Filipino archipelago was lucky that it avoided the avian flu and the severe-acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that devastated Mainland China and Hong Kong in 2003. Drug abuse is ruining many lives, especially the youth, as reported in this article: Illegal-Drug Abuse Now an Epidemic in the Philippines

S exually-transmitted diseases (STD) go unchecked and often unreported in the Philippines, where there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of poor Filipinos who now use their bodies as a livelihood tool in practicing the world’s oldest profession. Medical experts wonder if there is already a Filipino version of the “Vietnam’s Rose” STD that devastated American servicemen during the 1960s.

Readers may like to go back to this article, Are Prostitutes the Cheapest “Commodities” (sic) in the Philippines? (Part I)--As Updated

Filipinos are simply getting back at their oppressive national leaders by cracking jokes that the President and her Cabinet and their lackeys in Congress and lapdogs in the military and police are perhaps suffering from mad-cow disease.

But Filipinos know better that President Arroyo’s days of swine and looking at the world in rose-tinted spectacles will soon be over. As the Tagalog idiom says it all, “Pag may umpisa, may katapusan.” (If there is a beginning, there is an end.). # # #