THERE was a time in the recent past when the biggest challenge for marketing companies was to comply with the rules pertaining to “truth in advertising”.
Nowadays, however, the marketing companies face a bigger challenge to comply with additional rules pertaining to “truth in packaging and labeling”. It now seems that since the new rules are perhaps too many, some marketing companies find it easier to either ignore the rules, or to go around these instead.
One of the more common violations are the failures to indicate the countries of origin and the names of the manufactures or distributors, together with their contact details.
Other than that, there are also violations pertaining to the lack of nutrition information, the lack of ingredients information, and the lack of allergens information. The latter is a matter of life and death to those who have food allergies.
I imagine that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would not give license to operate (LTO) to these marketing companies if they are not compliant with the rules. Either that, or some of these marketing companies might have found ways to go around the rules.
Perhaps the loophole here is that LTOs pertain to companies only, and do not pertain to individual products. So, what should we do in order to run after these violators?
It seems very clear that the lead agency should be the DTI, but I think that the other agencies that should join the task forces should be the Department of Interior and local Government and the Department of Health.
COOPERATIVE OWNED HEALTH CLINICS
There is now an opportunity for cooperatives to operate their own health clinics, perhaps as an alternative to the government operated Barangay Health Units (BHUs).
Unlike the BHUs however, the Cooperative Health Clinics (CHCs) have to be run as commercial enterprises, and not as charitable or as public service clinics. What that means is that the cooperative members have to pay for the goods and services that they get from the CHC, although at much cheaper and more affordable prices.
That is so because the cooperatives could sell free of retail taxes, and on top of that, they could also offer patronage discounts and stock dividends.
What makes this opportunity more attractive is that the costs of some goods and services could be reimbursed by PhilHealth, and on top of that, the cooperatives could even earn some revenues because of the incentives that the health insurer has allocated to participating clinics.
In order to be accredited by PhilHealth, however, the CHCs need to have full time doctors on duty, and they also need to have access to pharmacy supplies and diagnostic laboratory services.
On top of that, they need to maintain Electronic Medical Records (EMR) that should be protected by data privacy laws. If you are part of a cooperative and you need help in putting up your own CHC, let me know so that I could connect you to accredited providers./PN
