Eastern Visayas Media Without Borders
Miriam G.Desacada
In December 2025, a cancer patient underwent a CT scan at a medical center, but it took a month to receive the results. In January 2026, the oncologist asked about the patient’s whereabouts because the results had finally been released.
This suggests a hospital’s “too-late-the-hero” response to a clinical situation that demands prompt action.In January 2026, another incident occurred, this time in a Rural Health Unit in Caibiran Biliran. A frantic father rushed his child for an emergency, but found himself facing an unbelievable situation.
The ER was locked from the inside, and no personnel were in sight. The father vented his frustration by breaking the glass door and some items, creating a chaotic mess. Responding policemen came and arrested the crestfallen father.
As soon as the father was detained, reports said his child eventually died without emergency attention. Instead, the father was jailed in his desperation to seek help for his dying child.
The two recent controversies raise questions about the role and significance of a hospital, and the reason for having such an institution. Are hospitals really meant to serve the public?Any government hospital is supposed to be the backbone of public healthcare—a place where people can seek treatment they can’t afford in a private facility. It is intended to serve as a safety net for the poor and a symbol of the state’s promise to provide healthcare as a right, especially for marginalized citizens.
These disheartening stories from government hospitals are painfully familiar: delayed medical attention, long and exhausting queues, patients shuttling from one counter to another, and families waiting hours—sometimes days—for care that should be immediate. These problems are worsened by an understaffed workforce, overworked doctors and nurses, and basic services—from laboratory tests to room availability—that are either limited or unavailable when most needed.
These are showcases of systemic failures. When medical preparedness is weak and processes are disorganized, a hospital cannot function properly, and its reason and purpose are turned upside down.Hospitals must reverse their atrophy and awaken from stupor, because when these frustrating conditions persist, it is always the poor who suffer the most.
For patients from rural areas and low-income families, government hospitals are the last option, not a choice. In such a setting, a hospital’s inefficiency is not just a management issue—it becomes a matter of life and death.
The question, then, is: how long should the people of Eastern Visayas accept this as normal? Correcting the situation requires more than patchwork solutions; it also calls for strong oversight—from the Department of Health, and lawmakers—to ensure funds translate into actual improvements, not paper accomplishments.Is there hope? Yes—but only if healthcare reform is treated as an urgent moral obligation, not a distant policy goal. Every government hospital must resolve its distressed system.
In a region that has endured disasters, poverty, and neglect, decent healthcare should not be too much to ask.
