PRB

Philippine mangrove forests play a critical role in supporting healthy ecosystems, creating opportunities for recreation and ecotourism, and ensuring prosperous livelihoods. Given their location in tidal zones, mangrove forests play a unique role in protecting local communities from shoreline erosion and typhoon damage, helping to stabilize elevation as sea levels rise. Over the last century, the Philippines has lost half of its mangrove cover, and many of the mangrove forests that remain are fragile and fragmented. These forests are under threat from both human and natural causes and local leaders must act to preserve mangrove forests and the ecosystem services that benefit all Filipinos.

This brief, available in English and Tagalog, details the valuable services that mangroves provide, explains the challenges of preserving and restoring mangrove forests, and provides recommendations for local leaders to take to protect communities from the consequences of sea level rise and increasingly severe typhoons. Both briefs also include links to the “State of Mangrove Summit” findings for Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, and the Central and Eastern Visayas.

Tuberculosis (TB) contact tracing among adult indexed cases is imperative for intensive case finding, especially among children 15 years old and younger who were exposed within three months prior to the adults’ detection and treatment, yet it is not uniformly conducted in the northern Philippines. To help understand and address the high burden of TB among exposed children, national and subnational governments need to establish guidance on contact tracing and provide health care workers with the resources and tools to improve the health of citizens. Through contact tracing, trained health care workers will be able to identify those who are eligible for either active TB or latent TB infection treatment following thorough screening and diagnosis.

This factsheet is available in both English and Tagalog.