Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T.
Breakthroughs

ANCIENT Roman poet and author of Metamorphoses Publius Ovidius Naso (often shortened to Ovid) wrote: “Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it.”

We wish the order were the opposite. We also wish that at worse, medicine may only snatch away health but in this age of advanced medical science medicine still can snatch our lives.

"Matod Pa Sa Lola ni Noy Kulas." Join the story-writing contest on Cebuano folklore and win prizes.

The Institute of Medicine, a chartered member of the United States Academy of Sciences, issued an alarming report, titled “To Err is Human.” It detailed the toll of preventable medical errors that were happening in the United States.

The figure states that up to 98,000 Americans die annually from because of these errors, and that was in 1999.

Ten years later, Lisa McGiffert, campaign director for the Safe Patient Project of Consumers Union and the report co-author, said more than 100,000 people each year still die from medical errors.

We are talking here about America, the seat of advanced medical science and technology. If they raked this much deaths because of medical errors, how would Philippines look like in comparison?

On June 30, 2004, Senator Luisa Ejercito Estrada submitted to the Senate Secretary the Senate Bill Number 121, an act proposed to be known as the Patient Safety and Errors Reduction Act. The act provided for the documentation of medical errors in the country, information that is vital in improving our healthcare system and in revoking the licenses of doctors who show pattern of incompetence in their practice resulting to worsened clinical picture of the patient and even death.

And yet after the 13th Congress when the bill was submitted, it has been left into oblivion. And patients may have lost an important portion of their protection against irresponsible practices in the medical profession.

Revival of this bill at the present Congress may be too late, but lawmakers need to consider working on its passage into law in the next Congress.

Lost opportunities, like this bill, is a loss dearly paid with Filipino lives in the arena of health care. Losing that opportunity is a failure, too, of the Filipinos. Psychologist William James reminds: “He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.”

Praiseworthy, however, are those select people who have taken on the task of documenting these “sins” of medicine and doing even the little they can to support family members whose lives have become part of these tragic stories.

Should you want to know more, visit Victims of Medical Malpractice (Philippines) at http://victimsmedmalpractice.blogspot.com. We also learned from this blogsite the advocacy of soon-to-be-Mrs. Roxas news anchor and TV personality Korina Sanchez, People’s Health Watch (E-mail: korina_abs@yahoo.com).