CEBU’s second Malasakit Center, a one-stop-shop program to process government aid for patients in need of medical and financial assistance was established on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020 at the Eversley Childs Sanitarium and General Hospital in Jagobiao, Mandaue City.

Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go and Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino handed over P5 million as the hospital’s initial Malasakit fund.

The one-stop shop will be the 66th Malasakit Center in the Philippines located in hospitals run by the Department of Health (DOH).

In Cebu, the first Malasakit Center was established at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in February 2018.

“Sa tingin ko, eight out of 10. Marami naman pong natutulungan. Hindi naman perpekto ang system. Ang aming matutulungan po yung mga poor at mga indigent patients (I think eight out of 10 patients are helped. It has helped a lot. The system is not perfect. We help those who are poor and indigent patients),” said Go.

Pythagoras Zerna, chief of Eversley hospital, said the new center will make it convenient for patients to process aid from participating government agencies, which include the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Health, and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. commonly known as PhilHealth.

“Because the patients will be discharged quickly, we can accommodate more patients,” said Zerna in a mix of Cebuano and English.

“The hospital’s services are currently limited to primary care such as pediatrics, minor surgeries, Ob-gyne and internal medicine,” Zerna added.

Eversley’s current capacity is 50 beds, but there are plans to increase this to 200 beds.

Zerna said they will cater to more patients by 2021.

Aside from the Malasakit Center, the newborn screening facility of Eversley Childs Sanitarium and General Hospital was also launched on Tuesday.

The screening facility is for the early detection of any hereditary illness that a newborn baby could incur.

Through this facility, blood samples from all the public and private hospitals in Central Visayas will no longer have to be sent for newborn screening in a hospital in Iloilo, Zerna said. (KFD)