Medical emergency

Some good for Philippine tourism is happening from that unfortunate experience of Karen Davila’s son in Siargao. Karen made enough noise about the absence of medical emergency facilities in that popular resort area to wake up authorities.

Karen’s son was learning how to surf in Siargao during last week’s holidays and suffered an accident. But to Karen’s dismay, they didn’t have anyone who could give him first aid.

Tourism officials say that setting up emergency facilities is not their responsibility, but that of the LGUs. The local mayor where the Siargao resort is located said they are a fifth class municipality and cannot afford such expenses.

Unlike in Boracay, the high end resorts in Siargao do not find it necessary to have their own medical emergency services. Boracay used to be notorious for this problem, but I am told some high end resorts like Discovery Shores have their own doctors and nurses on duty or on call.

Given the growing number of visitors, the resorts should work together to make emergency medical services available. The absence of such facilities makes us less desirable than say, Phuket with its world class hospitals within easy reach.

As I related in a previous column, a doctor friend’s e-mail contrasted our situation with neighboring Asean countries:

“As you enter the township of Ha Long Bay (Vietnam) – an imposing building greets the visitor, the size of the new Makati Med, it is one of a few hospitals; Phuket (Thailand) has 10 hospital – six are all-service; Bali (Indonesia) has three general hospitals; Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia) – four including the world famous Gleneagles of Singapore. Heart attacks in these resorts are hardly ever ‘massive’ – l can assure you.”

I had been writing about the need for facilities in our resorts that can at least stabilize a heart attack or stroke victim for evacuation by air to the nearest city with a good tertiary hospital. Many such victims would have survived, if our resort areas have such a facility.

As recently as last month, I noted this exchange of e-mails among doctor friends. A local doctor was communicating with US-based classmates for a medical mission here. They were planning a side trip to Boracay and here is one comment in the thread:

“Yes, I’ll be concerned about their potential visit to Boracay – for lack of basic emergency healthcare facilities, to at least come close to its world class destination reputation. A couple of years ago, my close friends MD couple who own a nice hotel in Boracay, asked for my help to approach the Philippine National Red Cross to have a facility there that could at least do type and cross match for emergency transfusion.

“They told me then about a recent incident involving a driver who had an accident and needed immediate blood transfusion. The patient had to be transported another three to four hours to Kalibo and by that time the patient practically exsanguinated (bled to death). Since I wrote a letter to Sen. Dick Gordon, chairman of PNRC, there have been some actions taken, I was told…”

Still on the same e-group of doctors who let me peek into their exchange, there was this troubling information:

“Like a typical ‘foreigner’, he (a balikbayan doctor) found my e-mails on Boracay beyond shocking, considering its ‘world class’ tag. He did ‘research’ on his own without any prodding from anyone.

“The (balikbayan) doctor confirmed the sorry state of Boracay hospitals - the first hospital did not have a functioning EKG machine, the second did have one, but no EKG paper. So… it drove ‘foreign’ doc bananas.”

“In proper health care, lack of EKG paper translates to lack of other emergency stuff. That’s not acceptable for a so-called ‘hospital’! And how many administrations tolerated this?”

But the good news is, I was just told there are at least two such emergency medical facilities. I hope these are not the same two facilities the balikbayan doctor visited with no EKG paper. But in fairness, here is what I am now told:

“Kasi nung February during my niece’s wedding, one of her ninongs was a heart patient. So they had to look into that, na may ER facility ang hospital and ang Discovery Shores.

“May doctor on call. Pag major operation wala talaga. But to stabilize the patient meron naman. Ciriaco Tirol hospital and Boracay clinic, but the latter is a huge facility. Bago pa.”

Glad to hear Boracay is now able to handle medical emergencies. But Boracay is just one. And from Karen’s experience, Siargao is another. What about Coron in Palawan? El Nido, I suppose, is okay if you are a guest of the Ayala resort. But there are many other resorts on the mainland.

Panglao is getting big and will be bigger once the new airport is operational. Then there is Camiguin. And yes, Batanes.

The state of the Philippine rural health system is nothing to be proud of. Things deteriorated after the local government code mandated devolution of health care to LGUs.

Our rural health doctors and facilities are overloaded just attending to the needs of our people. We can’t add emergency needs of tourists to their responsibilities.

This is why TIEZA must invest some of the travel tax money they collect from us – providing proper emergency medical services in key resort areas. It is probably asking too much to have an on-duty doctor all the time, but if they have well trained EMTs or emergency medical technicians, and given proper facilities, that will be fine.

Lifeline, that private emergency service, is reputed to provide pretty good training for EMTs. Maybe they can be contracted to train EMTs in the facilities TIEZA must set up.

The tourists are effectively paying to get that assurance of emergency service availability. We, the natives, just want to get the most out of the taxes we pay.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.