Marcos assures no rice shortage in coming months

MANILA -- President Ferdinand

R. Marcos Jr. on Thursday assured the public that there would be no rice shortage in the country in the coming months.

Marcos gave the assurance following his meeting with officials of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and National Food Authority (NFA) at Malacañan Palace.

He said the country’s rice supply situation is in “good shape”, as he noted that the government is implementing measures to control the price of rice.

“Hindi tayo magkukulang sa bigas. At tinitingnan natin lahat ng paraan upang ang presyo ay ma-control natin at hindi naman masyadong tataas (We won’t have rice shortage. And we are looking at different ways to control the price so that it wouldn’t increase that much),”

Marcos said in a video interview.

Under the DA 2023 supply outlook, the country’s total supply is at 16.98 million metric tons (MMT), which is sufficient to cover this year’s demand estimated at 15.29 MMT.

Based on this data, the DA said the country would have an ending balance of 1.69 MMT, which is equivalent to 45 days of buffer stock, instead of the 90-day ideal buffer stock to stabilize the price of rice.

Marcos, however, pointed out that the NFA should build up its buffer stocks sourced from local farmers for now.

He also noted that while the government would still have to consider importation, the volume of rice allowed to enter the country has dropped significantly. “Magpa-plano kami kung kailangan mag-import, kung kailangan magpahaba, magparami ng buffer stock sa NFA dahil masyado ng mababa. ‘Yun lang ang nakita naming problema, mababa

‘yung buffer stock ng NFA. (We are planning when to import, and when to buffer the stocks of NFA because it is very low. That’s the only problem that we see, the low NFA buffer stock),” he said.

He said the government will try to prevent the rise in rice prices if they try to increase the country’s rice stockpile.

“Kaya’t ‘yun ang hinahanapan namin ng paraan para i-adjust. Siguro ang magagawa natin ay ang pagbili ay hindi bigla. Hindi malaki. ‘Yun lamang. (We’re trying to find a way to adjust this. What we could probably do is to buy rice gradually. Not in bulk. That’s it). Also, you have to remember. This is agriculture, cyclical ito, by season ito,” he said.

The NFA is proposing the importation of 330,000 MT of rice to cover an expected deficit in the country’s buffer stock for the relief operations of various agencies in the event of calamities this year.

Agriculture officials said the proposed buffer stock of rice is equivalent to nine days of national consumption from July 2023 onwards and will ensure sufficient volume for calamity and relief requirements from July to December this year.

Given the NFA’s budgetary constraints, the agency expects its buffer stocks will decrease to less than 500,000 sacks by July 2023, which is equivalent to less than a day of public consumption.

As of April 6, the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) has issued 989 Sanitary and Phytosanitary Import Clearance (SPSIC) applications for 3.170 MMT volume of rice applied out of the 3,024 SPSICs.

Of this volume, 790,449.12 MT of imported rice has arrived.

Among those who met the President were Agriculture

NATIONAL CITY, CA -- Paradise Valley Hospital, a member of Prime Healthcare, today announced that it has been recognized by Healthgrades as a 2023 Patient Safety Excellence Award™ recipient. This distinction places Paradise Valley Hospital among the top 5% of all short-term acute care hospitals as evaluated by Healthgrades, the leading marketplace connecting patients and providers. This is the tenth consecutive year that Paradise Valley Hospital has been recognized with this award (2015-2023).

For the eighth year in a row,

Prime Healthcare, one of the nation’s leading health systems, had more Patient Safety Excellence Award recipients than any other health system, according to Healthgrades.

“Through our 2023 Patient Safety Excellence Awards, we seek to recognize hospitals that excel in providing top-quality care for their patients while preventing serious injuries during hospital stays,” said Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer and head of Data Science, Healthgrades. “We are proud to name Paradise Valley Hospital as a 2023 Patient Safety Excellence

Award recipient and look forward to their continued efforts to make patient safety a top priority.”

If all hospitals, as a group, performed similarly to the 2023 Patient Safety Award recipients, on average, 95,880 patient safety events could have been avoided.*

“This award is a remarkable milestone,” says Neerav Jadeja, Paradise Valley Hospital CEO. “To win a Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence award is quite an achievement itself. The fact that we have managed to remain among the top 5% of all hospitals in the nation for patient safety--for 10 years in a row—is a testament to our commitment to serve and provide for our community. I am beyond proud of the men and women of Paradise Valley Hospital!”

During the 2019-2021 study period, 164,592 potentially preventable patient safety events occurred among Medicare patients in U.S. hospitals.* Healthgrades found that just four patient safety indicators accounted for 74% of all patient safety events: hip fracture due to an in-hospital fall, collapsed lung resulting from a procedure/surgery, pressure or bed sores acquired in the hospital, and catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired in-hospital. Healthgrades’ analysis also revealed that patients treated in hospitals receiving the Healthgrades 2023 Patient Safety Excellence

By Lainie aLfaro

SAN DIEGO, CA -- Imagination and creativity are the words FilipinoAmerican director, Jesca Prudencio, said captivated her when she came across “Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play.”

“I’m drawn to work that challenges what I know and what our audience knows,” Prudencio said. An Asian American teenager, MSG and time travel would seemingly have little in common. Yet, in Keiko Green’s play “Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play,” these three things collide to tell the teenager’s story of redeeming her family name and fitting in, while also presenting moments grounded in comedy. The play is running at the Old Globe April 13 through May 7. And for director of the play, Prudencio, the challenges that the main character must face are not far from home.

“There’s so many things in the main character, a fourteen year old girl, that I relate to,” Prudencio said. “Thinking about how I grew up in a very white suburban town and wanting to be just normal, I think that’s what’s also fascinating about the play. When you grow up in a place where you stand out, you so desperately, or I so desperately wanted to fit in. That’s what Ami’s, the main character’s, experience is. She wants to fit in. She wants to blend in.”

Prudencio grew up in Harrisburg,

Pennsylvania, where her parents immigrated for work as physicians. While her family isn’t in her same field of work, she said it was her family who inspired and continues to inspire her work ethic.

“My parents were very supportive of me being an artist,” Prudencio said. “They just said that if I’m going to do it, I have to be the best. They were very big on me working hard, just as hard as they did as doctors. That work ethic I really took away from them. I see how hard they worked to live their dreams as physicians here in America; I put that same work ethic in my own.”

She also credited the PhilippineAmerican Association of Central Pennsylvania she grew up in for inspiring her love of performance.

“That’s actually my first introduction to performance and theater, doing these cultural dances,” Prudencio said. “From there, I got into singing and dancing. I played the violin. I got into acting and then eventually directing. It really all started with my Filipino cultural community doing cultural work.”

She continued to follow her dreams of performance, receiving her BFA in Drama from New York University Tisch and an MFA in Directing from University of California San Diego.

She also was the inaugural recipient of The Julie Taymor World Theater Fellowship. With the support of this fellowship, she traveled throughout Thailand, Japan and the Philippines in 2017 researching traditional and contemporary forms of theater in each country. She said these experiences have impacted her directing journey, especially when it comes to “Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play.”

“You’ll feel that in this production too — my travels and training doing Filipino dance and Noh dance in Japan. This play unlocks my creativity in a really exciting way,” Prudencio said.

In her time as a director and choreographer, she said her creativity has been grounded in telling stories that are not only entertaining but also challenging to the audience “Here’s the thing. If an audience leaves my work just saying, ‘Okay, that was nice. What a nice show.’ For me, that’s not a success,” Prudencio said. “I’d rather people leave questioning something or wanting to