CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu City Medical Center has received P5 million to P10 million worth of donation that would help upgrade the hospital status from Level 1 to Level 2 facility.
CCMC hospital administrator Kenneth Siasar yesterday accepted 34 electronic beds, 140 packages of medical clothing, 21 electronic blood extraction chairs, 54 fire proof hospital doors, 42 hospital mattresses, 25 bedside meal cabinet, 31 pieces of assorted medical equipment, 10 furniture, and 10 walkers from a private citizen of Belgium.
“With our 30 beds expansion for the surgical ward, we don’t need to buy beds anymore. It is a big help to CCMC and Guba hospital. Some equipment will be given to Guba hospital,” Siasar said.
He said the hospital management will still have an inventory of all the donated items before placing it to different wards in the hospital.
Siasar expressed his gratitude to Patrick Haghedooren for donating the medical equipment. Siasar said Haghedooren saw the need of the hospital to be upgraded after the Department of Health downgraded it.
Councilor Mary Ann de los Santos, who was designated deputy mayor for health services, said it will be helpful in the application of CCMC to Level 2 status.
“It will definitely help CCMC in the delivery of basic services,” she said.
De los Santos said the donation is very timely for the application of CCMC since it needs to be a 150-bed capacity. She said the city government is still waiting for the DOH to release its upgraded status.
As of now, she said the status of the upgrading is in the “pipeline of releasing.”
“We have minor corrections in the plans and hopefully we will get the Level 2 accreditation,” she said.
De los Santos said she personally went to Manila last Monday to see officials of DOH, who assured to help the city to get the Level 2 status.
To recall, DOH downgraded the status of CCMC after the old building was demolished because of the damage during the earthquake. CCMC was temporarily relocated to the building of the Bureau of Fire Protection and Cebu City Transportation Office building along Natalio Bacalso Avenue.
The old CCMC building used to accommodate 300 patients but now it has only a capacity of 103 patients.
Siasar said the hospital management is working hard to increase the bed capacity of CCMC especially with the expected completion of the first phase of the construction of the new hospital building in July 2017.
As Level 1 facility, CCMC is only capable of performing minor surgeries like wound dressing, removal of sutures, suturing of minor injuries, among others.
Under the rules, a Level 1 hospital or an “Emergency hospital” may provide only initial treatment and management to patients requiring immediate treatment and primary care for prevalent diseases in the area; general medicine, pediatrics, minor surgeries, and non-surgical gynecology; primary clinical laboratory, pharmacy and first level radiology; and nursing care for patients needing minimal supervised care.
Level 2 hospital, on the other hand, include services like general medicine, pediatrics, surgery, anesthesia, obstetrics and gynecology, first level radiology, secondary clinical laboratory, pharmacy; and nursing care for patients needing intermediate supervised care. (FREEMAN)