Ailing Yolanda survivors fight for their lives in damaged hospital facilities

Buenaventura Arota's life is in his loved ones' hands, literally.

His children take turns to pump the manual ventilator that helps their pneumonia-stricken father breathe. His situation worsened when he was submerged in water during the onslaught of Typhoon Yolanda on November 8.

“Basang-basa siya nung bumagyo, parang natrauma pa rin siya,” his wife Asuncion told GMA News while holding Arota's hands to ease the pain. His daughter, on the other hand, was humming a song while touching his forehead.



Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center, where Arota has been confined since November 15, has a generator set now but its ventilator, along with other medical equipment, was damaged when Yolanda sent seawater surging through the hospital.

Because of the lack of facilities, eight newborn babies in the hospital's makeshift neo-natal ward died.

One of them was Bernard Jr., who was born with congenital heart disease. His parents had to manually pump his ventilator to allow him to breathe. Bernard Jr. died as help was on its way to airlift him to another area.

A total of 14 hospitals are now operational throughout Leyte, with seven of these in Tacloban, according to a Department of Health official.

Dr. Romulo Busuego, assistant secretary of the DOH Mindanao cluster, said they are prioritizing the EVRMC to allow it to serve more patients.

“Priority itong restoration ng government hospital, being the biggest facility here. Most of our people are coming in, improving the ward, improving the facilities, the usual operation of the hospital. Iniimprove namin yung surgical capabilities nila and we are trying to improve system here in terms of logistics, communication,” he said.

In Ormoc City, patients crowd the only public hospital, many of them waiting to undergo surgery.

“Wala kaming pera para ipa-scan [yung kamag-anak namin] dahil sa Yolanda,” Dulcisimo Tallada said.

Dr. Julie Lyn Hall, World Health Organization country representative, earlier said all 34 barangay health stations and three government hospitals in Ormoc City were damaged.

Help from outsiders

Because of the damage to the hospitals, many Yolanda victims are taking advantage of the mobile hospitals set up by foreign medical teams.

The DOH has also pulled doctors and nurses from different hospitals in the country to serve in the affected areas.

In Divine Word Medical Center, one of the two private hospitals taken over by the DOH, a South Korean medical team set up their mobile facility. The six South Korean doctors and 10 nurses have been working side by side with Filipino medical personnel since November 12 to treat the victims. The South Korean team will stay in the country until the end of the month.

After cleaning the ground floor of the hospital, the team installed an ECG machine, an X-ray machine, an ultrasound machine, an intensive care monitor and even hospital beds and chairs that they brought from South Korea.

“I hope to continue this kind of medication and this kind of medical service to the [victims of the disaster],” said team leader Dr. Yeong Kim.



Hall said there are now 43 foreign medical teams and 44 Philippine teams working in the typhoon-affected areas.

She acknowledged the difficult task of reaching all the people who need medical attention.

“Trying to ensure the continuity of critical health services in these areas is quite a significant task. It really is a phenomenal effort to try to reach those who needed most,” she said in an interview with GMA News Online.

She said 70 percent of cases they saw for the first week to ten days of the tragedy were trauma-related.

“Now what we are seeing in patients are infected wounds, and an increase in the number of patients with heart conditions, uncontrolled diabetes and other conditions that result from a lack of access to medicines in the past two weeks,” she said.

Vaccinations

In a press statement, Health Secretary Enrique Ona said that medical teams will be sent into the affected communities so that survivors will have access to emergency, basic and even comprehensive medical services.

He said the department is now beginning to focus more on public health, as the threat of epidemics looms in vulnerable communities that do not have access to safe water and which suffer from poor or inadequate sanitation or vector control.

“Although there are still no outbreaks recorded, we instructed the newly-deployed replacement teams to step up measles, tetanus, oral polio and rabies vaccinations in all evacuation centers,” said Ona.

On the effort to rebuild or rehabilitate destroyed or damaged health facilities, the health secretary appealed to the private sector and nongovernmental organizations to offer resources and personnel that will address infrastructure, equipment and manpower needs.

One of the first to respond was the Makati Medical Center, which pledged to partner with Remedios T. Romualdez Hospital in Tacloban for its rehabilitation needs.

“This adopt-a-hospital campaign, at least during the holidays, is one way our private sector partners can spread the Christmas spirit. We hope to see more hospital partnerships as rehabilitation of health facilities continues,” Ona said. — BM, GMA News