Lady mayor promotes TB prevention among Subanens

Daylinda Sulong, a Mathematics teacher by training, is on her second term as mayor of Lapuyan Municipality, a poor coastal town in Zamboanga del Sur, Mindanao. Most of Mayor Daylinda’s constituents (71%) are Subanen indigenous people. Although only married to a Subanen, Daylinda adopted the Subanen culture as her own and prioritized bringing health education and services closer to the Subanen in her town. In fact, health has the biggest budget in her municipality.

Since 2007, USAID, through its TB control project (TB LINC), has provided Lapuyan with technical assistance in drawing up the municipality’s comprehensive TB control operational plan and training Lapuyan’s health staff. The training included the administration of TB Directly Observed Treatment Short-Course (DOTS), TB microscopy, and patient counseling. USAID also helped Lapuyan organize community support groups to identify persons with TB symptoms and assist patients in completing their treatment. Mayor Daylinda immediately put such assistance to good use by signing the 2008 Municipal Ordinance No. 25, which earmarks funding for the training of health personnel and for the purchase of anti-TB drugs to supplement the stocks received from the Department of Health. Mayor Daylinda did not stop there. She converted an unused warehouse into a TB DOTS facility, which now serves TB patients not only from the municipality’s 24 villages but from other areas as well, benefitting over 200,000 residents. The facility also has a new sputum collection area providing privacy to TB patients. The Mayor hired a fulltime medical technologist to provide microscopy services and assigned a nurse to oversee implementation of the TB program. The program not only improved sputum microscopy work. It resulted in more accurate case recording and reporting. It also increased the number of TB patients who were identified and started on treatment. For instance, the number of people with TB symptoms who consulted with the health center rose from 73 in 2008 to 133 in the first three quarters of 2009 alone. What drives this empowered woman? “Seeing how people in my town have become healthier inspires me," says the Mayor. This article was contributed by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), the largest corporate-led social development foundation in the Philippines, which manages the Linking Initiatives and Networking to Control Tuberculosis (TB LINC) project. Led by the Department of Health, TB LINC is a five-year, USAID-funded technical assistance project that aims to reduce TB prevalence, morbidity, and mortality. The project supports the Business Roadmap to the Millennium Development Goals by contributing to the global target of at least 70 percent case detection rate and 85 percent cure rate.