Health is highest priority

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

The title of today’s column goes without saying, and I think that is a problem because while all agree that healthy body and spirit are primordial and ought to be the highest priority for a productive and happy life, this is one sector that local governments take for granted. A cursory look at towns and cities attests to this fact.

Bacolod is a classic example. It never had its own hospital and depended only on the provincial hospital and yet most of its patients are from the city. Bacolod contributes to the provincial hospital but that’s it.

There had been clamors for a city hospital for decades but aside from clinics and a few health centers Bacolod is a first-class city without its own hospital.

Last year Bacolod planned to borrow over P2 billion for education, which is laudable but the rest are vanity projects, e.g., a coliseum. The call for a city hospital was brushed aside because Bacolod has several private hospitals and two are being constructed. But they are expensive.

The pandemic is a painful experience – a lot could have been done to save lives. Of course, last year was too late, but the lesson is clear – today shows the importance of a hospital, the demand so great that people had to be denied admission.

Last June, the bill of Bacolod Representative Greg Gasataya for a Bacolod General Hospital was passed by Congress and the Department of Health had pledged to get this project on track. We do not know when the project will be implemented but the legal bases for this hospital are already on track.

 

What this shows is that a will to do it is all it takes and the Bacolod congressman pushed it and Congress agreed.

 

We would have been content with Congressman Gasataya’s move but last week’s news said that last year he filed House Bill 2686, creating the Bacolod-Negros Heart and Kidney Center. We did not know because he filed it without fanfare until he revealed last Thursday that it was already approved by the House Committee on Health.

 

He said that cardiovascular and kidney diseases remain the top causes of death in the country. More than 276 Filipinos die from a heart attack every day and 28,215 regularly undergo dialysis because of kidney problems, placing heart diseases as the top killer disease and kidney problems as the 7th top cause of morbidity and 8th of mortality in the country.

 

It clearly shows that cardiovascular and kidney diseases kill more Filipinos than the dreaded Covid-19 that caused the nation to panic.

“While there has been significant improvement in the quality of medical services that the state provides, issues in terms of accessibility due to financial and geographical constraints still remain. Patients suffering from cardiovascular and kidney disease from all over the county are often faced with no other choice but to go to the Philippine Heart Center and the National Kidney and Transplant Institute in Metro Manila just to avail of specialized medical assistance from the government due to lack of local facilities that can accommodate their medical needs,” he explained.

 

He rightly said that “the deficiency on tertiary government medical facilities places an additional burden on patients, especially the poor through added expenses such as travel fare, lodging and miscellaneous expenditures.” Indeed only the rich can afford the cost and live.

 

In Occidental Negros, Gasataya said only two government-owned dialysis centers and a lone tertiary government hospital cater to thousands of patients with cardiovascular and kidney diseases in the province. Patients in need of delicate procedures had to go to Manila.

 

“This bill, therefore, seeks to address these issues and make quality medical care and services more accessible by establishing a center for heart and kidney diseases in the City of Bacolod,” he said.

 

If this bill passed Congress, and I see no reason why it should not be except for partisan politics, Congressman Gasataya, only on his second term in Congress, shall have done more for the welfare of people than all the Bacolod congressmen before him whose main achievements were roads, bridges and barrels of saliva. He works quietly – we did not know that he had filed these bills until they were approved.

 

The benefits of his moves are beyond measure.*