The sorry state of health

THE J.R. Borja General Hospital (JRBGH) had reportedly received P18.6 million from the DOH early 2012, this comes to no surprise as this public hospital has sorely been needing improvements to its facilities.

Yet with all these positive developments, one still can’t help but think that progress has still been too slow, and the hospital has been marred with controversies from doctors resigning from their posts, and the recent hospital beds diverted by Korean donors to Vietnam for the city’s alleged neglect to receive them.

The horror stories have been numerous, from being dirty; having poor ventilation, patients crammed up in rooms, or having no rooms at all, to reports of death just because the hospital lacked the necessary equipment.

As a public hospital this is relied upon by thousands of Kagay-anons who look to receive free and quality healthcare. But it seems that it has fallen short toward consistently achieving this expectation

Health is supposed to be a fundamental human right, as a human right the city is obligated not only to look at the outcomes of distributing health services, but also the process, this means that the quality of participation from citizens toward health cannot and should never be substandard, the right to health means that services have to be available, accessible, acceptable and of competent quality.

Unfortunately we’ve rarely seen the concerns of public hospitals go beyond mere talking points, when was the last time that politicians battled this out as the forefront of their platforms? It seems as if for a human right there is very little political interest from making it amongst the priority.

Cagayan de Oro has been undoubtedly seeing commercial progress, new malls, new buildings, new businesses, but for all the economic miracle happening around there has been disproportionate growth to the City hospital, this isn’t about expecting it to transform itself as a five star facility, but clearly if these economic growths were meaningful it has to at least trickle down substantively to the improvement of public services, and health should be one of its priority.

Most of the patients of JRBGH have no choice, otherwise getting more competent services would mean it would come at their costs, and for many of these people this would lead to an unwanted cycle of debt. With rising costs in healthcare the public facility is the only guarantee that people can be protected from being further disenfranchised. These people are already sick, how much more inhumane can it get when their forced to be poorer just to get healthier.

The expectations surrounding the state of health have to go beyond mere discussion, obviously as citizens we only usually worry about health when disease afflicts us, few people really pay attention to everyday concerns on hospitals, and quite often having insurance means that some of us have usually opted out from seeing the horrors plaguing hospitals like JRBGH.

But not many of us enjoy this, for the hundreds of thousands uninsured the City hospital is there only means of getting healthier, this means that there has be a more compelling catalyst in making sure concerns like this don’t get neglected, and that progress no longer becomes too slow, we are already too far behind.

For everyone to really enjoy the economic miracle of Cagayan de Oro, we should aspire to not only be commercially successful, it should be also our equal duty to be healthy as well, and this means that public facilities like JRBGH have to be beyond what they are right now, that they should mirror this city’s growth. If health truly is a fundamental human right it has to start being treated as one, failure should be not be an option. (Giano M. Libot)

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