THE Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday, October 2, 2025, said all three of its hospitals in Cebu are fully operational in the wake of the magnitude 6.9 earthquake that hit the province.
In a radio interview, DOH Spokesman Albert Domingo said the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, the Cebu South Medical Center, and the Eversley Child's Sanitarium and General Hospital are all functioning properly.
"Those three hospitals have no problem as they are fully functional and operating," said Domingo.
He added that the three Philippine Emergency Medical Assistance Teams (Pemats) of the DOH are also on standby and ready for deployment.
"They are not deployed at any given time. It depends on the on-the-ground field assessment because a place will have to be identified for their mobile hospitals," said Domingo.
On Tuesday night, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck Cebu, with the epicenter located 21 kilometers northeast of Bogo City.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reported that some 47,221 families or 170,959 individuals were affected by the quake.
In a separate radio interview, Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa bared plans to fully implement the Zero Balance Billing (ZBB) in Cebu for the benefit of the quake victims.
Herbosa said this means that they are looking to implement the ZBB in both public and private hospitals.
"We want to cover all the hospitalization, wherein when the public hospitals become full, we would also like the private hospitals to help," said Herbosa.
He said he has asked the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) to help cover the patients in the private hospitals.
"I will just have PhilHealth cover those injured, who cannot be attended to by the public hospitals," said Herbosa. (Anton Banal/SunStar Philippines)