DOH and Sanofi-Aventis kicks off 4 o'clock habit campaign tomorrow - "Linisin Ang Kapaligiran, Dengue Ay Maiwasan"

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Department of Heath with Sanofi-Aventis kicks off 4 o'clock habit campaign - "Linisin Ang Kapaligiran, Dengue Ay Maiwasan" to raise awareness against dengue. 

The launch of the campaign will be held August 18, 2015 at Esteban Abada Elementary School, Palomaria St., Brgy. Veterans Village, Q.C. 

Among the special guests are Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista and Ms. Ching Santos, Sanofi Pasteur Country Manager. Another highlight of the event is the Dengue Educational Talk by Mr. Mark Anthony Capiral (Sanitation Inspector 1). Mark Capiral and Ruby Lucasan will be the event host. 

The pre-program starts at 7am with the following set of programs:

7:00        -    Registration of students

7:30        -   General Assembly for the Parade

8:00        -  Dengue School Parade

8:45        -  Arrival of Participants

Opening of Dengue Interactive Booths

Opening of Dengue On-line Terminals Intermission Number of Drum & Bugle Games on Stage.

There will also be a Dengue Dance Competition for the Grade School Level and High School Level.

Health : A holistic approach to diabetes treatment can save your future

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Be active, eat right and stay healthy! Eating right is important to staying at a healthy weight and keeping an energy balance the balance between the calories in what you eat and drink, and calories you burn when moving.

Physical activity, along with a healthy diet, helps prevent diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, and other serious medical conditions.

Living with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) can be tough, requiring consistency, discipline, and a clear plan for achieving the treatment goals that doctors advise patients to pursue. And while standard medication can help get your blood sugar down, this only works if accompanied with lifestyle shifts such as healthy nutrition and physical activity.

Dr. Bobby Mirasol

“It was never an easy disease to begin with, early intervention comes alongside a deeper understanding of the need for comprehensive solutions for T2DM patients, comprising lifestyle adjustments as well as pharmacological treatment,” says Dr. Bobby Mirasol, Former President of Philippine Society of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism (PSEDM) & ASEAN Federation of Endocrine Societies (AFES).

Recent developments in the treatment of diabetes do however point toward a revolutionary new drug that reduces blood sugar while supporting weight loss and blood pressure reduction. It sounds simple enough on paper, but for the people who have to live through the struggle, the burden just got a whole lot lighter.

A shot at a sweeter life

Dapagliflozin is a novel treatment for type 2 diabetes that prevents the kidneys from absorbing sugar and releases excess glucose through the urine instead. Because of this mechanism, doctors may prescribe it on its own, or as a complementary drug that acts independently of insulin therapy.

In clinical trials, dapagliflozin performed at par with or slightly better than leading diabetes medications. According to the International Journal of Clinical Practice, the results strongly indicate a significant reduction of blood sugar throughout the spectrum of type 2 diabetes.

Available in the Philippines since 2014, dapagliflozin has been used to effectively treat more than 20,000 Filipinos with type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Rima Tan, President of Diabetes Philippines, believes that the drug’s far-reaching therapeutic value can give patients a fair shot at a better life.

Dr. Rima Tan

“Dapagliflozin has been lauded for a reducing blood sugar levels of patients with additional health benefits,” she says. “Patients routinely show weight loss and lower overall blood pressure, which is a great for patients struggling with the lifestyle adjustments necessary for managing type 2 diabetes.”

Patients are expected to maintain these benefits over time, and this allows patients to gradually ease into appropriate lifestyle changes. This generally promises a smoother therapeutic experience that’s both effective and ultimately empowering.

The low-down on diabesity

Interest in dapagliflozin has also been fuelled by the looming threat of diabesity, a comorbidity that is particularly common among Filipinos, and that amplifies the risk of developing complications such as heart disease, kidney disease, and blindness. 

Diabesity is a two-fold struggle that not only deals with type 2 diabetes, but also has a deep-seated relationship with obesity. The two are so closely intertwined that up to 85% of grossly overweight individuals end up developing type 2 diabetes in their lifetime, which in turn increases the chance of aggravating obesity depending on the type of medication taken.

Doctors however are hopeful that with the dapagliflozin, presently the only available SGLT2 treatment in the market in the Philippines, diabesity can be successfully addressed.

“It’s an uphill battle at first, but with the right support and dedication, diabesity is something we can all beat together,” says Dr.Mirasol. “While it’s amazing that we have a drug that finally addresses these particular facets of the diabetic experience, we should never forget the value of good old-fashioned support.”

A little help from our friends

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is among the biggest supporters of the fight against type 2 diabetes, going all out with the development of holistic diabetic care solutions covering practical health support from doctors, nutritionists, and physical fitness experts along with dapagliflozin treatment.

They have also lobbied for healthier lifestyle changes in patients with T2DM with activities like The Road to a Sweet Life that seek to couple drug treatment with the adoption of positive health habits like proper dieting, and adequate physical activity.

With these available innovative intervention and the multi-stakeholder approach, people with diabetes can now have better quality of life than ever before. 

“If you are living with diabetes, it’s important to make choices that keep you and your loved ones healthy,” says Dr. Emmanuel Arca, Associate Medical and Regulatory Affairs Director of AstraZeneca Philippines. “It will take concrete changes in lifestyle to bring great success in managing diabetes.”

For more information, visit www.astrazeneca.com

Megaworld to open another hotel in Resorts World, the first Belmont Hotel in bustling Newport City

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Fourth hotel brand in Newport City slated to open in October; sets to cater to business travelers

Property giant Megaworld is set to launch a new hotel brand in Newport City this year. To be called Newport Belmont Hotel, this local brand by Megaworld will be first introduced within the company’s 25-hectare township in Pasay City, just across the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3.

Set to be fully-operational in October this year, Newport Belmont Hotel is a 10-storey business-class hotel consisting of 480 rooms and suites ranging from 23 to 33 square meters in size. It is located right in front of the new Marriott Grand Ballroom, which is touted to be the biggest pillarless hotel ballroom in the country today. It is also just within walking distance from Resorts World Manila and Newport Mall.

The hotel features a contemporary architectural design with each room having a curtain wall (floor to ceiling glass wall) to maximize the light permeability. One of the hotel’s highlights is its tropically landscaped atrium, which provides an amazing view of Resorts World Manila and the entire township.

“The entry of Belmont Hotel in Newport City is a timely opportunity as the existing hotels experience remarkable monthly occupancy rates since they opened a few years ago. We are bringing a new brand to cater to the discerning tastes of business travelers,” explains Lorenzo Tang, General Manager, Newport Belmont Hotel.

Newport Belmont Hotel boasts of first-class amenities that include podium gardens, a 24-hour fitness center and workout area, lap pool with in-water pool lounge, paved sunbathing lounge, massage deck and seating area, pool spa, steam and sauna rooms as well as its own business center and medical clinic. It will also have a dining and shopping arcade at the ground level.

This will be the first hotel under the Belmont brand to be opened, and the fourth hotel brand to rise in the vast Newport City township, which also houses Resorts World Manila and three other hotels, namely: Marriott Hotel Manila, Maxims Hotel and Remington Hotel.

Currently, these hotels have a total of 1,137 rooms that enjoy an average of at least 85-90% occupancy rate every month.

Last year, Megaworld chairman Dr. Andrew L. Tan announced that the real estate giant along with its sister company Travellers International Hotel Group will be building hotels around the country with a total of 12,000 rooms.

In the next five years, both companies will be expanding to an additional 10,000 new hotel rooms, all of which will be in Megaworld’s township developments.

“By the year 2020, we envision our group to be the largest hotel developer in the Philippines,” Dr. Tan announced.

Just this year, Megaworld has also opened the 12-storey, 149-room Richmonde Hotel Iloilo inside the 72-hectare Iloilo Business Park in Mandurriao, Iloilo City. This is the first under the Richmonde Hotel brand to open outside of Metro Manila.

To date, both Megaworld and Travellers International have already built 2,049 rooms in its existing hotels: Richmonde Hotel Ortigas; Eastwood Richmonde Hotel; Marriott Hotel Manila, Maxims Hotel and Remington Hotel in Newport City; Fairways and Bluewater in Boracay Newcoast and Richmonde Hotel Iloilo. With the opening of Newport Belmont Hotel in Newport City, the total hotel rooms in Megaworld townships across the country will already reach 2,500 by the end of this year.

DepEd boosts capacity for its last mile efforts

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The Department of Education (DepEd) is conducting a series of workshops for its regional and division coordinators for the Adopt-A-School Program (ASP) to strengthen the capacity of its field offices for building partnerships and linkages with educational stakeholders from different sectors for the Department’s Senior High School and other last mile efforts.

The workshop aims to orient newly-designated ASP coordinators on their roles and responsibilities, strengthen coordination, and reinforce guidelines concerning the said program. Standardization among ASP-related processes from project preparation to implementation and monitoring was also emphasized.

DepEd Undersecretary for Partnerships and External Linkages Mario Deriquito said that partnerships with the Local Government Units (LGUs), National Government Agencies (NGAs), Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), companies, business establishments, cooperatives and schools and other training institutions are vital in achieving expected outcomes in DepEd's various programs. 

“Co-ownership is what we need to establish,” he said. He underscored the importance of engaging stakeholders in institutionalizing educational reforms and in ensuring the continued delivery of quality basic education to Filipino learners. “Through partnerships, we are able to build a constituency, a community of supporters,” he added. 

Deriquito cited some of the notable DepEd programs that need partnerships and linkages such the K to 12 Senior High School and programs for hard-to-reach learners like Pedals and Paddles Project, the Kariton Klasrum, and the recently launched LightEd PH.

The Pedals and Paddles Project targets to provide 35, 734 bikes and 1,216 boats to learners in far-flung areas to ease access to schools. Kariton Klasrum aims to provide street children, out-of-school children (OOSC) and school drop-outs aged 5 to 14 with access to basic education.

LightEd PH is a campaign that hopes to engage partners in expanding access to electricity and technology to 1,101,501 learners enrolled in over 5,000 schools that are still un-energized through conventional and alternative sources of energy. 

Emphasizing that education is everyone’s responsibility, Deriquito added, “There is no need to do everything ourselves. Partnerships allow us to focus on what we do best.” As the Department heads in the full implementation of the K to 12 Senior High School (SHS), Deriquito believes that through the collective efforts of different sectors, we can deliver quality basic education to our learners. 

“Local government units, national government agencies, companies and business establishments, civil society organizations, and other institutions can help provide work immersion opportunities, hands-on expertise, and additional resources for DepEd to be able to offer a more effective Senior High School program,” Deriquito said.

Google celebrates Buwan ng Wika with Translate-a-thon

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Philippines kicked-off a month-long nationwide translation campaign called Love Your Language with it’s first translate-a-thon to improve the quality of Filipino and Cebuano translations online.

In celebration of Buwan ng Wika, Google invites every Filipino including translators, language lovers, and culture enthusiasts to contribute to the Google Translate Community to help bridge language barriers and bring the Filipino and Cebuano languages and cultures better representation online to share with the rest of the world.

"The Google Translate Community is a platform for Filipinos to express their national pride and love for our local language through their contributions," said Gail Tan, Google Philippines Head of Communications and Public Affairs. "Through this dedicated community effort, we believe that the Filipinos can build a web that truly works for them as they make Filipino and Cebuano languages better understood and appreciated online by both native and non-native speakers.”

Throughout August, Google is holding a series of Love Your Language translate-a-thons across the country through several community-led and campus-led events in Bacolod, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Dagupan, Davao, General Santos, Guimaras, Halsema, Iligan, Iloilo, La Union, Los Banos, Makati City, Pangasinan, Quezon City, and Zamboanga.

Individuals and organizations who want to help translate as part of Love Your Language in the Philippines can get more information and register at https://sites.google.com/site/loveyourlanguagephilippines/ or https://goo.gl/HPwI3Z. 

Participants are encouraged to share their Google Translate Community anecdotes through their social media channels using hashtags #LoveYourLanguagePH or #GoogleTranslatePH.

Love Your Language Campaign

Love Your Language is Google's way of empowering the communities to build high quality translations online for their languages using the Google Translate Community Tool so that native and non-native speakers can appreciate the language better.

Love Your Language in the Philippines  is NOT a contest.

Google is encouraging Filipinos to help improve the translation of Filipino and Cebuano languages online at their own leisure. But Google will recognize the top contributors in the country at the end of the month because their effort will surely bring better representation to these languages online, and they want to honor them for that.

Everone can be anywhere in the world. If you want your contribution to count towards the submissions coming from the Philippines, sign up here. Otherwise, you can use the Google Translate Community Tool without registering.

You have to sign in using a Gmail account to use the Google Translate Community Tool.  If you don't have a Gmail account, you can sign up for one here. 

Google advises to use only one account when you sign in to the translate tool so they can attribute the right measurement to your contribution. Google discourages the use of one Gmail account by multiple people for online security reasons.

Feel free to translate Filipino and Cebuano if you're knowledge of them. Your contribution count will be the total number of submissions coming from your Gmail account regardless of language. 

All the submissions made from your Gmail account from August 1, 2015, 12:00 am to August 31, 2015, 11:59 pm will be counted towards your total contribution, whether it's under Translate or Validate, Filipino or Cebuano.

Everyone can keep translating beyond August to continue improving Filipino and Cebuano on the web. But Google will only measure the contribution by organizations and individuals until August 31, 2015 as part of this month-long program. 

For more information, visit the Love Your Language site.

How to use Google Translate Community Too

Once you are a a registered participant (FORM), you may access the Google Translate Community tool at https://translate.google.com/community from your computer or mobile devices. Using the tool is very easy:

Step 1: Sign in with your Gmail. 

Step 2: Click on the bar lines at the left and then click on Languages. You may choose English, Filipino and Cebuano. You can also change your settings, check your badges and your stats from here 

Step 3: Select the translation you want to work on. 

Step 4: Translate or Validate. Have fun! 

(There is no English-Cebuano Validation yet. This feature will appear once we have enough English-Cebuano Translations to validate.)

Google Translate 

Today, websites, documents, emails and even instant messages can be translated into 90 different languages -- including Filipino and Cebuano-- instantaneously and for free through Google Translate.

Launched in 2006, Google Translate has become one of Google's most popular and useful products, processing a billion of translations a day. 92% of Translate's 500 million users are outside the USA. It currently supports text inputs in 90 languages and spoken translations in 42 languages. In its conversation mode, Translate can recognize a language being spoken and provide translation between the two languages for 32 languages. It can also recognize and translate text in an image in 36 languages through its Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology

Google Translate learns from the available material on the web and gets smarter as it receives more inputs.

Google Translate Community is a free feature on Google Translate that allows language enthusiasts to help improve the translation quality. This helps Google Translate to have quality translated words in 90 languages as well as help Google in launching new supported languages. 

With the new Google Translate Community tool, people can directly contribute in helping improve the representation, accuracy and understanding of their language online. Using this tool, people can generate new translations as well as to rate and compare existing translated words and phrases. 

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.