The Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH 7) is urging parents to have their newborn babies undergo a screening within 24 hours after birth to determine if the baby has a disorder.
Ruff Vincent Valdevieso, Newborn Screening Program Coordinator for DOH 7, said during yesterday’s conference at the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. that all public and private hospitals and birthing facilities in Cebu province offer the screening.
The screening is priced at P600 but parents who are Philhealth registered can avail it for free.
Valdevieso said the screening was first implemented in Manila in 2004 and later in Region 7 in 2006.
A total of 393 health facilities in the Central Visayas offer the service — 228 from Cebu Province, 98 from Bohol, 58 from Negros Oriental and nine in Siquijor.
“The facility will collect blood samples from newborn children and these will be delivered to the West-Visayas State University Medical Center in Iloilo City for screening,” said Valdevieso.
Valdevieso said early disorders that might affect the newborn’s health include congenital hypothyroidism, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, phenylketonuria, glucose-6- phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, galactosemia and maple syrup urine disease.
Valdevieso also said the DOH 7 cannot put up a newborn screening center in Cebu since there is no hospital or facility who offered to shoulder the cost.
“Each screening center would need about P20M to put-up the facility and so far no one offered but we have sent out invitations to them but no one replied,” he said.
Out of the 100,000 recorded infants born last year, only 52 percent or 81,785 have undergone the screening.
Valdevieso said that most parents living in rural areas are the ones who could not avail the screening because of financial constraints.
He also said that DOH is currently coordinating with other local government units to subsidize the payments.
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