BY GLENDA TAYONA
ILOILO City – Twenty-one barangays or 11.60 percent of the city’s 180 barangays have so far passed verification and have been certified as “zero open defecation” (ZOD) villages, data from the City Health Office (CHO) showed.
These barangays are Veterans, Osmeña, Pres. Roxas, Zamora-Melliza, Magsaysay, San Agustin, and Roxas Village in the City Proper district; Quintin Salas, Buhang, Luna, Seminario, CC E1-98, and Javellana in Jaro; North Fundidor and Compania Central in Molo; Divinagracia, Lopez Jaena Norte, and Bantud in La Paz; San Rafael in Mandurriao; and San Jose and Quezon in Arevalo.
CHO officer-in-charge Dr. Anabelle Tang, however, noted the number of barangays which have achieved the ZOD status may still increase because the initial number was the result of the first batch of verification.
Under DOH Memorandum No. 2015-0021 Guidelines on Verification and Certification of Barangays for ZOD status released in 2015 yet, local government units are required to create their ZOD verification and certification team.
The team is composed of the municipal/city health officer, sanitation inspector, City Social Welfare and Development Office, rural health personnel (as assigned), City Engineering Office, City Agriculture Office, and City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office.
Tang said the team will still have succeeding verifications to be carried out in the coming days.
However, she lamented that currently, there might be a delay on the next batch of verification because of the current health concern the city is facing and focusing on, particularly the cholera and acute gastroenteritis (AGE) outbreak.
The city on Friday, Sept. 2, has been placed under a state of calamity due to cholera and AGE outbreak.
To date, almost 50 percent or 77 barangays in the city are affected and have cases of AGE.
On Sept. 2, the CHO-City Epidemiology Surveillance Unit (CESU) logged 56 additional cases of AGE, bringing the total cases to 284, while cholera cases and deaths due to AGE remain at eight both./PN
