THE problem is too visible and obvious for the Department of Health to be blind to it. In the face of the growing number of people clinging to life despite having to undergo dialysis for a lifetime, health authorities are slow in responding to this instinctive clamor and will to live.
That’s why the number of dialysis patients continues to be on the rise, much faster than the mortality rate among kidney patients.
As we, dialysis patients, daily “rage against the dying of the light”, the DOH is hardly coping, failing to address this growing problem of ailing Filipinos trying hard to have life-saving dialysis centers within their midst.
For reasons neglected or we do not know, the DOH has yet to make dialysis readily available. We would have understood if it takes funds for health authorities to set up more dialysis centers to address the steadily growing number of kidney patients clinging to dear life through this measure.
THE DEPARTMENT DOES NOT NEED FUNDS TO ESTABLISH DIALYSIS CENTERS IN, IDEALLY, ALL THE PROVINCAL HOSPITALS IN THE COUNTRY.
All the DOH has to do, but is not doing, is to provide a venue for the establishment of a dialysis center in all provincial hospitals in the country and make this life-saving procedure nearer and accessible to all patients who, more than anybody else, needs to cling to life’
For life, whatever it may be, is beautiful.
As is the case in government hospitals with such life-saving service, the installation and operation of the dialysis machines will be done by private bidders, thereby saving the government funds for their set-up and operation. This is the case with the dialysis center at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center where the company Presenius has set up 30 machines for patients all over.
Reason enough for the provincial and city government hospitals in the country like Daguipan City in Pangasinan and even the regional hospital in San Fernando, La Union to set bids for companies to set up their treatment centers there.
Such arrangement would spare many patients from all over who come to wait for the chance to be hooked to the treatment machine at the BGHMC.
They come here because BGHMC charges P2,100 per session, much less than the rates as high as P5,000 per treatment in private centers in their native towns and cities in Northern Luzon.
That’s why it pains us, dialysis patients trying to cling to dear life, when people, especially a fellow patient, questions, for reasons known only to him, why we complained when people who did that Kalayaan Run broke their announced promise that the effort was for the benefit of dialysis patients.
The fellow patient, a lawyer, went to the extent of insulting his fellow patients, saying they should not be “mukhang pera” for complaining why their illness was used to raise funds for the run organizers.
Being himself a patient, he should know the difficulties of his fellow patients. For one, it’s a pity that a woman kidney patient from Pangasinan would arrive here Monday for her treatment at the BGHMC and stays there until the end of the week by sleeping on a pew of the hospital chapel so she could save on transport costs and her strength from being sapped by travel.
She would have been spared of this difficulty if only a dialysis center is also set up at the Pangasinan Provincial Hospital.
The continuously rising number of patients flocking to the BGHMC because of the lower treatment charges has forced the center to open its machines three to four sessions a day. It is giving doctors and nurses continuous pressure and the DOH enough reason to promise it would expand the life-saving facility.
While waiting for that promise, DOH officials should, without delay, open dialysis centers in all provincial hospitals in the country. In doing so, they would also ease the pressure on the BGHMC.
Another issue the DOH must address is the lack of facilities for psychiatric patients in the country. Thanks to the late Dr. Asela Casem, the BGHMC has an honest-to-goodness psychiatry department that the good doctor built and developed.
While the national leadership and DOH authorities recognize the importance of improving our mental health service, much has to be done beyond the publication of phone numbers to call when one is depressed and needs counseling.
Time and again, we are told that no doctor with a financially practical mind would specialize in psychiatry, a reason for the dearth in the field in the country. Then the government can provide financial incentives to those who decide to serve in the field. That made the late Dr. Casem a rarity for not thinking of the financial returns when she joined and built the psychiatric center as the only one government facility of its kind in Northern Luzon.