We are pleased to present Stratbase ADR Institute’s August 2021 Occasional entitled, “Recurring Disparities and Issues in the Philippine Pandemic Response”, authored by our Health Sector Lead, Mr. Alvin Manalansan.

This paper revisits the pandemic response of the Philippine government and discusses the growing challenges brought by the emergence of various COVID-19 variants. Despite the enormous investments of both public and private sector to help address this crisis, the overall pandemic response remains inadequate and noticeably slower as compared to other neighboring countries.

Furthermore, the paper also examines the demand for additional testing capacity, the weakness in contract tracing, and the slow pace of the country’s vaccination plan. More importantly, the paper highlights the persistent challenges that put the Philippine Health System Management at risk.

Relative to the Stratbase advocacy on promoting health solutions amidst the pandemic, this paper specifically argues that the whole gamut of deficiencies and inefficiencies of the health system, in terms of pandemic response, can be traced back to the weak implementation and monitoring of public spending.