Of Ashes and Crises
The nearing selection of the next director of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) goes beyond merely choosing between the two nominees. If anything, this will determine whether the hospital upholds its mission to serve the marginalized or collapses under chronic understaffing, dilapidated facilities, fire hazards, and relentless budget cuts. Such crises, despite whoever gets selected, will only continue to permeate, if a pro-people director remains beyond reach.
The decision rests with the UP Board of Regents, where sectoral representatives are outnumbered, to appoint a director who understands the plight of overburdened workers, champions just working conditions, and upholds the hospital’s duty to serve the poor against systemic neglect. Concurrently, the challenge rests with the UP-PGH community to continue rallying until campaigns for accessible healthcare are forged and heard.
Lives are at stake in selecting the next PGH director. Six hundred thousand patients annually rely on the free services provided by the hospital, most of whom are from the underprivileged sector. With PGH being branded as the national referral center, it remains among the few options for hospitals and healthcare services that offer inexpensive medical services. The next director is then faced with a crucial challenge — to firmly resist any form of commercialization or privatization under the guise of “meeting the hospital’s demands.”
Patients’ lives hang in the balance, and insufficient funding for PGH is cutting their lifelines. This year, the allocated budget for medical assistance for indigent patients (MAIP) was slashed from P828.3 million last year to P533.8 million this year. Almost P300 million were denied to poor patients who rely on financial assistance for their hospital expenses, professional fees, and medicines. The fate of the marginalized patients is in the hands of the next PGH director — will they turn a blind eye to the thousand cuts inflicted on the hospital’s budget or will they let these patients bleed to death as healthcare remains a commodity rather than a right?
Currently, the hospital is strained with issues of understaffing with nurses tending to at least 20–50 patients in general wards, proving that the working conditions for healthcare workers are inequitable and disproportionate considering that the nurse-to-patient ratio for general wards is designed for 1:20. The questionable working conditions that the PGH administration allows their employees to work in is a clear violation to labor rights and is a palpable neglect of patient welfare.
With dismal working conditions, it is also the patients who bear the brunt as they are deprived of the proper medical care they seek. PGH employees need to endure the abhorrent state in which the public hospital is managed, hampering their ability to provide the utmost quality healthcare they can. If any indication, this points out that the chance to prioritize not only workers’ rights but also access to quality health care should not be missed.
Being at the helm of a century-old public hospital demands not only grassroots leadership but also uncompromising advocacy for genuine public health reforms. Despite substantial portions of the systemwide budget being funneled into big-ticket hospital infrastructure projects, these initiatives often fail to address the immediate needs of the masses — communities for whom public healthcare remains their sole lifeline.
The approval of a P9.5 billion cancer institute under a Build-Transfer-Operate (BTO) public-private partnership (PPP), touted as a major healthcare milestone with its 300-bed capacity, reveals a paradox: half of these beds are earmarked for private, paying patients, betraying the goal of universal access to healthcare.
The hospital suffered from three fire incidents this year alone. Despite a budget of P260 million for the procurement of a fire suppression system, current director Gerardo Legaspi failed to utilize this to take appropriate measures to prevent future incidents. If Legaspi were given another three years, neglect of the true problems within the four corners of the hospital will persist, setting patients’ lifelines on fire.
These scarring events ironically defeat the purpose of a hospital, where patients are supposed to feel secure in hopes of recovering from their illnesses, and the lack of action from the administration seems to expose them more to greater safety risks. The gravity of such issues only highlights a need for a proactive director, one that will prioritize the safety of their constituents to avoid such risks from recurring.
The importance of PGH as the national referral center is as clear as it can get. Over the years, it has served as the medical center for thousands of families seeking medical and inexpensive care. But if it continues to be managed by a director who fails to see and act on the pressing issues hounding the hospital, it cannot fully serve its purpose of bringing health to the people. The hospital will remain engulfed in crises — healthcare workers will remain overworked, and more lives will be wasted.
