Every day in the Philippines and around the world, parents are killing their children without knowing it. Their deaths could be prevented with a glass of water, but a common myth in uneducated villages says that water will harm an individual who is suffering from diarrhea. Thus parents withhold fluids, ending their children’s lives.
In parts of the Philippines, to have a major medical emergency such as a stroke, heart attack or tumor means certain death, according to Southern Baptist missionary from Alabama Jess Jennings. Jennings and his wife, Wendy, have served in the Philippines for 13 years.
“I’ve seen it firsthand,” he said. “Hospitals here [in the Philippines] just don’t have the supplies to treat their patients.”
Many Filipino doctors are heading to America, where a nurses’ salary is higher than a doctor’s salary in their own country.
The poorer Filipino people are forced to go to public government hospitals, although the country also has advanced facilities and educated medical workers.
The initial examination at these public hospitals is free, but when a problem is discovered the hospitals lack medications and other supplies to treat the illness. Even simple resources such as bandages and pain killers must be purchased outside of the hospital.
Just across the street from the hospital is a line of outdoor pharmacies, where a family member of the hospitalized patient must go to purchase all medicines the doctors need to treat the patient. If the family does not have the funds to purchase prescriptions, the patient simply remains in the hospital without treatment, which often happens.
The conditions in the hospital can be viewed as “gruesome,” but more commonly just bring a state of perpetual sadness.
Up to three patients lie on a single cot of wood slats, cots arranged in rows down the sides of one long room, like a summer camp of sickness. A single fan rotates in the center of the room. The patients lie inert in the stagnant heat. One struggles to move, much less recover from illness.
Pacita, a local widow, was admitted to Agusan Del Norte Provincial Hospital in Butuan City after passing out in her home. When Jennings visited her, he took the list of the prescriptions she had been given to a doctor to ask about her condition. She was being treated for high blood pressure and head trauma, although the doctor did not know if either of these was her problem.
“Patients and their families are too scared to ask questions of the doctors, and doctors never offer you any information,” Jennings said. Perhaps that is why Jovic, a 5-year-old boy, passed away when struck by a foot-powered tricycle. The boy remained in hospital care for about four days before he reportedly died from head trauma. Meanwhile, his parents visited every day but could never find out about their son’s condition.
Unlike a westernized emergency room, there are no loved ones arriving. Jovic’s family, and others like them, simply sit outside the door of the hospitals, waiting for death to arrive.
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