More medical access, benefits to PWDs in LT

June 10, 2019 Provincial

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet- Persons with disabilities (PWDS) and patients suffering from chronic illnesses in this capital town will have easy medical access and will avail of more benefits after its local council approved an ordinance for the issuance of a special PWD identification (ID) card.
Based on the ordinance, PWDs and patients with chronic illnesses can avail of a 20 percent discount for medicines, services, laboratory examinations, therapies and dialysis.
The ordinance, coauthored by councilors Horacio Ramos, Estrella Adeban and Arthur Shontogan, will give additional benefits provided that patients apply for the PWD identification card.
The Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office (MSWDO) was assigned to implement the issuance of the PWD identification card.
The ordinance was anchored under Republic Act 7277 or the Magna Carta for Disabled Persons, which defines PWDs as those “suffering from restriction of different abilities as a result of mental, physical, or sensory impairment to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being.”
Chronic illnesses, also known as non-communicable diseases, are conditions of long duration and generally slow progression that cannot at present be cured with controlled laboratory examinations, medication, therapies, dialysis and other treatment.
Chronic illness covers cardiovascular diseases, all types of cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cystic fibrosis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s and other dementia’s, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.
 
Primo Agatep/ABN