By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
If you are a parent with children aged 15 to 25, they need a long talk about this — not just about sex, but about risk, health, and the hard, frightening data. Even if your child is upright, responsible, and focused, the demographic they move into — now or ten years from now — has become the epicenter of a looming public health crisis.
In Quezon City, where I live, 421 new HIV cases were logged from January to May this year — up 7.7% from 2024. A third of those infected are aged 15 to 24. Forty percent are students. These are the kids of today. Our kids.
And Quezon City, despite its aggressive initiatives — free testing, PrEP, ART, clinics in every district — still struggles with funding and reach. If this is the case in the country’s most proactive LGU, imagine the rest.
Nationwide, the Department of Health reported 57 new cases per day in early 2025. The Philippines now has the highest rate of new HIV cases in the Western Pacific Region. Cases among youth have surged by 500 percent! The youngest reported patient is a 12-year-old from Palawan.
This is no longer an isolated issue. This is a generational emergency.
DOH has asked the Marcos administration to declare HIV a national public health emergency. That request must no longer sit idle. Because without a whole-of-government approach —more funding, education, free and stigma-free access to prevention and treatment — Filipino families will continue to walk blind into this epidemic.
We owe our children more than just awareness. We owe them action.
Sara on trial
Let’s stop pretending this is complicated: Sara Duterte must be tried. Even for DDS diehards, this is the moment they should welcome — a chance for their Davaoeña heroine to swat away what they loudly insist are trumped-up, purely political charges. If she’s innocent, let her prove it under oath. Let the truth come out.
Catholic bishops led by Archbishop Soc Villegas said it perfectly: Truth delayed is truth denied. And went as far as calling this delay “sinfully wrong.”
President Bongbong Marcos, though, should not be a fence hitter. He himself voiced out his mind that the trial will spill over into the 20th Congress — and yet he declares he’s keeping out of it, letting the Senate do its job without coercion.
But how convenient is that! The VP on trial is the very one he handpicked, campaigned with, and placed at DepEd, where public funds were allegedly wantonly misused — so the charges say. That’s not just a governance problem — that’s a trust issue, and Marcos’s silence in this case will be seen, if not as weak, as complicity.
No, Mr. President — this isn’t the time to play neutral. This is your political Frankenstein. Own it. Speak up. Say it at your State of the Nation Address at month’s end. Be a president. Be a man enough to say it.
(Note: The Senate impeachment court was not yet convened at the time of this writing. What a wait!)
