Eastern Visayas’ hospital marks 100th year

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines  — Surviving the devastation of the horrifying super typhoon Yolanda in 2013, the Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center (EVRMC) marked its 100th year anniversary last July 16.

During the centennial anniversary celebration of Region 8’s biggest government hospital, Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell Ubial announced in a press conference the desire of President Rodrigo Duterte to bring into the facility the kind of services that the Philippine General Hospital gives to the public so that residents here need not go to Manila for treatment.

“It is our dream and our hope that this medical center will actually be better than it is right now,” Ubial said, while extending congratulatory message to the men and women in the only learning-teaching hospital in the region.

“We’re looking at the PGH as our ideal medical center and tertiary learning-teaching hospital, and we must have that situation happen here in Eastern Visayas,” said Ubial. “Truly our dream is to have a PGH-like facility here in Eastern Visayas, that is the EVRMC.”

The Health secretary assured the people of Eastern Visayas and the staff and management of EVRMC of the department’s full support in the effort towards the goals as well as aspirations for this medical center in the region.

Ubial said: “It is part of our health sector reform agenda to actually ensure that we have quality, available and affordable health services for our people wherever they are.”

EVRMC was created on July 16, 1916 as Leyte Provincial Hospital with barely 14-bed capacity located in an interior street in Tacloban City until it was moved to its present site in 1925.

On July 6, 1970, the hospital formally opened its School of Nursing, the 7th school of nursing under the DOH, and only nursing school in Leyte and Samar at the time.

In 1972, Republic Act 6527 was enacted changing its name to Speaker Daniel Z. Romualdez Memorial Hospital (SDZRMH) and increased its bed-capacity from 100 to 250. The DOH also designated the hospital as a regional teaching hospital and the end-referral hospital of all government hospitals in Region 8.

Different clinical departments were upgraded in 1984, by virtue of the Residency Training Law. At present, the accredited Residency Training Programs are on internal medicine, general surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery, pathology, anesthesia, and family and community medicine.

The Residency Programs of the Departments of Orthopedics, Psychiatry, Ophthalmology and ENT are currently preparing themselves for accreditation as well.

After the EDSA revolution in 1986, President Cory Aquino issued Memorandum Order 48 renaming SDZRMH to Tacloban City Medical Center (TCMC).

On March 24, 1992 by virtue of Republic Act 7879, TCMC was renamed as the Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center (EVRMC). Since then, and despite limited resources, medical and non-medical personnel of EVRMC tried thier best to address the medical requirements of its patients, especially the indigents in the region.

The EVRMC is now a modern, tertiary level-4 teaching and training hospital nestling on a total land area of 25, 639.36 square meters owned by the Leyte provincial government, accessible and strategically located midway between Samar and Leyte.

On June 25, 2014, during the 2nd quarter full council meeting, the Regional Development Council-8 endorsed the EVRMC Modernization Program costing P2 billion.

The project involves the construction of a new 6-storey hospital and ancillary building in a lot owned by the Leyte provincial government at Barangay Cabalawan, this city, and is expected to be finished next year.

The Cabalawan site has a total floor area of 30,000 square meters with 420-bed service wards and 180-bed private rooms. The construction of the out-patient department building, through the auspices of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) at a cost of P350 million, is now underway.

According to EVRMC chief of hospital Dr. Gerardo Aquino Jr, the maternal and child building of EVRMC in its current site was inaugurated in the first week of this month. EVRMC will soon have a magnetic resonance imaging machine and be a cancer center, the first in Eastern Visayas.

Aquino added that the DOH Botika ng Barangay (in-house drugstore)in EVRMC is envisioned to serve very soon not only patients confined in said hospital, but out-patients, local government units and the general public, too.  (FREEMAN)