Loading
The health ministry of the Philippines. Under the 2019 cancer law it chairs the national cancer control council, manages a Cancer Assistance Fund that pays for treatment at listed government hospitals, and runs a programme that gives free cancer medicines not yet covered by the national insurer.
The Department of Health carries out the National Integrated Cancer Control Act (Republic Act 11215, approved 14 February 2019). The Secretary of Health chairs the National Integrated Cancer Control Council, which is attached to the department and served by its Disease Prevention and Control Bureau; the council's members include the heads of PhilHealth and the Food and Drug Administration, two oncologists and three representatives of patient organisations. The law also created the Cancer Assistance Fund, managed by the department, made cancer a notifiable disease, required every hospital to keep a cancer registry and to submit its data as a condition of renewing its licence, and placed a Philippine Cancer Center under the department's control.
A Joint Memorandum Circular of the Department of Health and the Department of Budget and Management, signed in September 2023, sets out how the Cancer Assistance Fund is used from fiscal year 2023: it pays for prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment of eight priority cancer types (breast cancer, childhood cancers, gynaecological cancers, liver, colorectal and other digestive cancers, adult blood cancers, head and neck cancers including thyroid, lung cancer, and prostate, kidney and bladder cancers) at access sites, complementing PhilHealth and the Malasakit programme. Access sites are hospitals meeting the requirements of Administrative Order 2022-0013 on the Cancer and Supportive-Palliative Medicines Access Program, the department's mechanism for giving free medicines not yet covered by PhilHealth. The circular cites a study in which many patients had spent at least P181,000 on cancer care after 12 months.
The department's Cancer Control Division leads a project with the Philippine Cancer Society and the Rizal Cancer Registry to expand population-based registries, described in its 2024 terminal report. The department's website refused our requests, so its own pages were not read; the coordinates are a Manila centroid, not the address.
Cervical screening in the Philippines reached a small minority of women in 2022 and mostly the better off, which is the gap the authors say screening programmes should target.
Where a patient lives decides how far they travel for radiotherapy or palliative care, which is part of why treatment waits and abandonment are concerns in Philippine cancer care.
Shares Health Technology Assessment Council, Philippines, Philippine Cancer Society, Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), Breast cancer (all types).
Shares Philippine General Hospital, Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), Colorectal cancer.
Shares Department of Health Rizal Cancer Registry, Cervical cancer, Breast cancer (all types).
Shares HPV & HBV vaccination, Cervical cancer, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Lung cancer (all types).
Shares HPV & HBV vaccination, Cervical cancer, Hepatocellular carcinoma.
Shares HPV & HBV vaccination, Cervical cancer, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Colorectal cancer.
Shares HPV & HBV vaccination, Cervical cancer, Hepatocellular carcinoma.
Shares HPV & HBV vaccination, Cervical cancer, Hepatocellular carcinoma.
Every source this page cites, grouped by who published it. Grouping is read from the web address, not assigned by hand.
A source that has moved or gone is reported by the weekly link check. /audit/