Agusan del Sur intensifies anti-smoking campaign, launched “SPONGE” campaign

By David M. Suyao

Thursday 7th of June 2012

AGUSAN DEL SUR, June 7 (PIA) -- The province of Agusan del Sur, thru the D. O. Plaza Memorial Hospital (DOPMH) intensified its anti-smoking campaign even as it launched the “Sponge” campaign today in order to give full support to the anti-smoking ordinances passed by the province and some municipalities while the rest of the municipalities are on process of passing the same ordinance.

During a press conference held at the DOPMH today, Dr. Joel Esparagoza, Provincial Health Officer said, it is high time that people, smokers or non smokers, should know the ill effects of smoking to human life so that the information will spread as wide as it can be, and media is one that has the biggest role in this endeavour.

Being a doctor for internal medicine and an authority in explaining the ill effects of smoking, Dr. Lorelaine Rivera-Pastor showed the members of the media a power point presentation on how the lungs absorb the smoke of tobacco that contains more than 4,000 chemical compounds in the form of hot gases and millions of tiny particles also known as aerosols. Tar, Dr. Pastor said, is the common name for all those particles that stand for total aerosol residue.

“As you see, the lungs is like a sponge that if smokers continue to supply it with tar, it will look like a very dirty honey comb dripping with very dirty honey when someone squeezes it. What is worst is it brings so many cancer diseases in the body and as we all know, here in Agusan del Sur, smoking related diseases is the number two causes of death,” Dr. Pastor said.

In his testimony Sangguniang Panlalawigan member Dr. Nestor Corvera relayed to the media how he suffered when he was attacked by a stroke due to heart failure.

“I want you to know that before, I can personally consume two packs of cigarette per day, and even when I am laying in bed, I smoke before I go to sleep. But I think when the abuses that I inflected to my body returned to me, I was helpless. If not for the help of Gov. Adolph Edward Plaza, the mayors of Agusan del Sur and some friends, I am already dead by now. That time, I need P1.5 million for a heart by-pass operation, and I do not have that much money. So I asked help from Gov.Plaza, his mother, former Gov. Valentina Plaza and the mayors, and they never turned me down. But the heart by-pass did not happen. Thru my prayers which the doctors and the nurses of the Philippine Heart Center told me to do, which I did, miracle happened. I was cured, but maintaining some P20,000 worth of maintenance medicines,” SP member Corvera said.

With the partnership that the D.O. Plaza Memorial Hospital forged with the media, Dr. Joel Esperagoza is hopeful that the campaign on anti-smoking will prosper in Agusan del Sur.