Tabuk centennial lady witness to two pandemics

May 24, 2021 Provincial

A Tabuk woman is witness to both the two worst pandemics mankind has ever experienced – the 1918 Spanish Flu and Covid-19 which hit the country in March 2020 until the present.
Lozana Dangan of Calaccad barangay, Tabuk this week was honored by both the city and provincial local government units after celebrating her 103rd birthday last March 1 and received a total of P70,000 from her LGUs and still awaiting the P100,000 from the national government.
Dangan was born just as the contagion after World War I ravaged much of the world where the death toll was somewhere between 20 to 50 million people.
The Spanish flu was said to have infected 500 million people during its wake that lasted until April 1920, when Dangan was two. The 1918 pandemic killed some 5,055 Filipinos, the second worst pandemic in the country, until Covid-19 arrived, after the fifth cholera pandemic in 1882 that reportedly killed 34,000 Filipinos.
Dangan celebrated her 102nd birthday last year just before the pandemic struck the Philippines and by March 17 of last year, she was forbidden from going out of their house due to the lock down imposed to stop spread of Covid-19.
Covid-19 has so far killed some 19,372 Filipinos from 1.154 million infections against the 163 million worldwide cases and 3.39 million deaths. The hardest hit are the United States with more than 33 million infections against 592,049 deaths, followed by India (25.2
M, 278,719) and Brazil with 15.66 million and 436,862 infections and deaths, respectively. The Philippines is at 24th, the second in Southeast Asia after Indonesia.
Dangan received her cash reward from the staff of the City Welfare and Development Office of which P50,000 came from the city and P20,000 from the provincial government.
Dangan, one of the oldest centenarians from Tabuk, thanked the CSWDO staff for visiting and giving her the reward. The mother of 13 children, grandmother to 36 and great grandmother to 12 believed that a person must not do bad things in any situation, said son Rickie Balcanao.
Balcanao added that his mother is the epitome of a strong woman who was able to survive the Japanese war and occupation. He added that his mother’s grandfather was able to reach a very old age and that it runs in their family but also credits her diet for the long life – no food preservatives.
Mayor Darwin Estranero has sent his congratulation to the centenarian saying it’s a wonder how she is able to reach that age and be able to witness the changes in the city for over a century, a release from the Public Information Office – Tabuk said.
Pigeon Lobien/ABN