We hear about it, we read about it, but the painful reality of public health in the Philippines is so horrible I now understand why many poor people end up staying home to die.
This story is about the painful, unbelievably complicated and expensive travails of “Narding,” our caretaker and childhood friend. His story is not unique and it teaches us that even if money was available, the truth is our provincial public health system is seriously lacking or damaged and patients pay in pain.
So, he was told to transfer to the Batangas Medical Center, the regional hospital that has the MRCP machine. After the bill shock of P51,000 plus room charges etc., we reached out to barangay captain Miguel Olgado of Inosluban to avail of free ambulance transfer to BATMC, which he provided immediately.
Former senator now Batangas Congressman Ralph Recto also sent two staff members to see what could be done to assist Narding, whom he has also known since childhood and when Recto first ran for congress. If you think all that crowd sourcing and joint effort was more than enough, well it still wasn’t. The situation reminds me of Humpty Dumpty and all the king’s men.
So, after nearly two weeks of not getting the actual medical attention he requires, after spending several bundles of cash, traveling from one hospital to another, to another and to yet another, what I discovered a day later was that Narding needed an ERCP procedure, a combination of Endoscopy and X-ray to treat problems in the bile and pancreatic duct.
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