Hello City Hospital

Two former City Health Officers are vying for a seat at the Sangguniang Panlungsod in the upcoming May 2022 Local and General Elections.

This will be a very welcoming and assuring point in the history of Ormoc’s health as both of these candidates surely will advocate to legislate programs and ordinances for the betterment of the state of public health in this City of Beautiful People.

When the local campaign period will kick off mid-March, Ormocanons will expect both of them taking turns of discussing the nitty-gritty of the controversial white elephant, the city hospital in Brgy. San Pablo.

The said edifice has been the center of discussions of netizens as to why it was left to go inoperative. The local government unit here has been consistent in its claims that the edifice was a birthing or maternity center and far from the standards to be called a hospital.

For starters, it was conceptualized and built during the last term of then city mayor Eric Codilla. When his brother, Edward, assumed office in 2013, they already procured the necessary equipment for the scheduled operation of the said facility. The timeline was working like a well-oiled machine up until the edifice succumbed to the wrath of Super Typhoon Yolanda.

The city hospital however completed rehabilitation and repairs before the Gomez administration took over. Six years later, the facility regressed instead.

Such, it would be interesting how these medical practitioners will look at the viability of the said facility which utmost importance is of service to the people, especially the marginalized.

However, digging deeper into the trenches, the claims that the LGU will not operate it since it’s just a birthing center and not a hospital is quite disturbing.

If accordingly it’s just a birthing center, it can greatly help the pregnant and laboring mothers to have a government-run health facility where they can labor. In these times of pandemic, public and private hospital beds are constantly in full capacity due to CoVID19, thus having a facility solely dedicated for maternal and child care comes as a breather.

Then there’s that claim that operating the health facility would be detrimental to the local coffers. This is quite in contrary with the actions and recommendations of the finance committee who were members of the technical working group during the early days of the facility. This claim doesn’t also conform to the green light given by the Department of Health Central Office to the Codilla administration to construct the edifice. With the DOH’s nod, it was assumed that the former already assessed the capacity of the LGU to operate such an endeavor.

Furthermore, the claims that the facility would demand a lucrative budget to operate blatantly expose the reluctance of the present administration to spend for public health care. This will be very trivial as for the past six years, landmarks sprouted from every corner of the city. Quite disturbing, these landmarks that trumpeted the legacy of the present administration easily siphoned the necessary budget.

The national and local governments were now on the thick of improving health facilities especially coping up with the coronavirus pandemic. The existing structures were enhanced to provide CoVID19 catchment facilities. Even national candidates have improvement of public health embedded in their respective platforms. But here in Ormoc, it’s quite a different story.

Thus voters should take into serious consideration to listen to the programs that these candidates will preach come campaign period. The shaky economic conditions coupled with the threats of the coronavirus makes health an even more expensive commodity. They have to demand to have public health care considered a priority.