By URIEL C. QUILINGUING
Contributing Editor
HEADS of public and private hospitals, almost a hundred of them in northern Mindanao, have been invited to a meeting on Monday for them to assess their preparedness in handling a worst-case novel coronavirus scenario.
Department of Health regional director Adriano Suba-an announced the meeting of medical center directors and chiefs of hospital chiefs Tuesday to allay fears the region may not be ready for the highly contagious virus from Wuhan, China, during a media forum at SM City Uptown mall in this city.
“How ready are we? I will give my answer to that question after Monday’s meeting,” said Suba-an and assured media practitioners they would be informed of the venue since the meeting is would be opened for coverage.
The health agency’s regional director said that, aside from the Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) in this city, hospitals in the region the DOH classified as levels 1 and 2 “must be ready for this” since the provision of an intensive care unit and isolation wards are prerequisites in the accreditations.
He commended the Camiguin General Hospital for the successful handling of the region’s two of the five “patients under investigation” (PUIs), so far, who eventually were discharged since the droplet samples from them were found negative of the novel coronavirus. Three other PUIs were admitted last week at the NMMC, one of them was found negative of the virus twice.
Readiness, he said, includes trained personnel and would be provided with personal protective equipment that includes a hazmat suit, helmet, eye protector, earplugs, respiratory protective equipment, safety footwear, among others.
Suba-an said President Duterte, in an inter-agency meeting in response to the novel coronavirus, expressed willingness to purchase the needed PPEs for all medical responders in an all-out effort to contain the virus.
He said he, so with the others, received a box of PPEs after the meeting.
Meantime, NMMC director Jose Chan said the containment of the new coronavirus, just like the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), would be resource-draining.
Chan said the NMMC, being a level 1 hospital, has allocated seven “isolation” rooms and has five beds solely for patients of highly infectious diseases like the 2019 novel coronavirus, Mers and Sars.
As of the moment, he said, the medical center has 30 sets of PPE, costing the national government through the DOH no less than P9,000 each and that every set is used by attending medical persons only once.
Other than the NMMC, two other DOH supervised medical facilities that are equipped to manage patients of highly contagious diseases are the Mayor Hilarion A. Ramiro Sr. Medical Center in Ozamiz City and the Amai Pakpak Medical Center in Marawi City.
“Since the NMMC is one of the country’s apex hospital capable of all human organ transplants, diseases which cannot be handled by other hospitals and medical clinics are referred to it,” said Suba-an, who also advised all other hospitals in the region to decide immediately, at their level, either to accept or refer patients.
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