Few oblivious city councilors

Churchill Aguilar

I HAVE been consciously keeping myself silent on local issues since I am already connected with one of the cities in Caraga. To my thought, it would not be fair to people concerned that I express my take on things where I am no longer fully immersed.

But there is just this one issue that has been resurfacing lately that I just could not keep my mouth shut or park my pen mainly because I was at one point part of its success story. I am talking about how some of the city councilors bully and hold hostage the most efficient and the most successful department in the city hall in terms of delivering social services — the JR Borja City Hospital under the leadership of Dr. Ramon Nery, a nationally recognized innovator and champion of Health Governance and an awardee of The Outstanding Filipinos (Tofil) on health.

You see, our not so brilliant councillors accused the city hospital chief of being inefficient in delivering the ICU even when there was a budget already. While on the surface it may seem that they have a valid claim, if we look into the details we would see just how ignorant our legislators are on the issue. And that if we even dig deeper, it boils down to their interest in the bidding of those ICU equipment — something that involves millions of pesos.

The bully councilors who are supposed to be allies are clearly ignorant if not moronic on this fight they are picking. Here’s why:

1. Successful managers usually use program evaluation and review technique-critical path method which is a management tool that prespribes for simultaneous matching of personnel and equipment. To illustrate what this tool says, here’s an analogy: kung mag tukod kag balay, mas maayu gyud nga mukuha ka una ug panday kai ang panday maoy kabalo unsa klase nga lansang ug kahoy paliton. Kung mag palit ka daan ug mga gamit nga wala pai panday mangadaot kini ug basin maka palit pa ka ug di mao ug mga usik lamang kini.

In short, the real main reason of the delay of ICU is not Dr. Nery, but the incompetent city councilors who deferred the hiring of 48 hospital personnel. I mean how can an ICU function without an intensivist? And where can we ever find an intensivist who will accept a “job order” status?

2. The ICU is not a stand alone unit. It is just one of the requirements to be a Level 2 hospital. But it also cannot exist without (a) tertiary laboratory (b) dialysis (c) highisk pregnancy unit (d) resperatory therapy unit (e) neonatal intensive care unit and a (f) CT scan. In short, if we buy the ICU equipment now, it will just be kept in the stockroom until all other units are also established, consequently we lose its warranty even before we could ever use them.

Yes, we wanted to upgrade to Level 2 because Cagay-anons need that too and the city hospital can achieve that in the next three years but we can’t rush the procurement of ventilators just to humor those oblivious councilors. Imagine if we force the issue, and we operate the ICU, so what happens when a patient gets out from the unit? Who will provide the after care of the patient? A primary hospital nurse and staff? That is unthinkable!

3. Legislative hearings to investigate this matter have been conducted so many the previous months and for the nth time of their investigation why did they fail to know the bigger plan of the city? With the P120-million supplemental budget they granted, how come they missed the fact that the P50 million was intended to build another primary hospital? Did they ever try to inquire about the status of that?

At the end of the day, the city’s mandate is only Level 1 hospital. The most important priority of the hospital now being a primary hospital is not the ICU, but rather primary care of basic illnesses that are needed by thousands of patients coming to the city hospital everyday, not the eight beds in the ICU. As much as we dream to have an ICU as soon as we can, the city hospital remains a primary hospital for normal birth delivery, infectious deseases, gastro interitis, pneumonia, UTI, as well as minor surgical cases such as caesarian and apendectomy.

There is a reason why the achievement of our city hospital is unparalleled in the whole country to date or why its director is nationally recognized as an outstanding Filipino on health governance. That reason is primarily because Dr. Nery is an honest-to-goodness competent public servant. He is not corrupt and no one, not even the bullies in the city council, can make his hands dirty.