By Jaemie Talingdan and Gillian Angnged
Disclaimer: The views and opinions of the interviewees do not reflect those of their organizations and its affiliations.
With COVID-19 cases on the rise and hospitals overwhelmed with patients, frontliners and civilians alike struggle to cope with the current health crisis.
Family members search in vain for hospitals with vacancies for COVID-19 patients, running from pillar to post for an available hospital bed, while others are left to grieve the loss of their friends from a screen.
Forced to rely on Google Maps and leads from Twitter, Jan Belmonte and his family called every hotline they could find in their search for a vacant bed for his lolo, who was sick with COVID-19 — even reaching hospitals hours away in Nueva Ecija and Quezon. Each one reported full capacity. At one point, Belmonte called a private hospital in Clark, Pampanga, but it was so overcrowded that his lolo would have been the 250th person in line to get a bed.
With none of the hospitals they contacted accepting COVID-19 patients, Belmonte and his family were left with an ambuvan owned by an infirmary, which his lolo had to share with another patient. Inside, there was only an oxygen tank — no doctor, no ventilator, and no necessary facilities.
“To me, hindi dapat kami ‘yung nagtatawag ng hospitals,” Belmonte said in a Zoom interview. “We had an entire year to prepare (for the crisis) — since February-March last year — and at the last minute of the second wave, we are looking for doctors, we are looking for hospital beds, and people are lining up outside the hospitals,” he added.
Belmonte said that the current pandemic response severely lacked empathy, expertise, and any real understanding of what was happening on the ground: “It’s just a lack of empathy talaga for you to decline medical data, for you to decline experts’ advice. It really doesn’t make sense.”
He noted that the government had been reporting that some hospitals were only at 60% occupancy, and that many others had not reached full capacity the entire time he and his family were looking for hospitals.
“To me, as someone who was able to call more than a hundred hospitals, I know for a fact that the data they’re reporting to the people is nonsense,” Belmonte said.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire in a press conference on April 7 said the statistics on the available hospital beds in the Philippines released by the Department of Health (DOH) did not reflect the present situation of health facilities in the county, as they were inclusive of beds in infirmaries and in hospitals that did not treat COVID-19 patients.
Like Belmonte, many other Filipinos have had to experience the loss of a loved one due to the government’s botched pandemic response.
It was March 31, and Miel Ochoa was about to message their best friend Ian on their birthday when Ian’s mother told Ochoa that Ian passed.
“Dahil palpak ang administrasyong Duterte, maraming Pilipino ang nagkakasakit, malubha pa ro’n ay namamatay. Hindi lang buhay ni Ian ang nawala kundi napakarami pang buhay—libong mga Pilipinong buhay ang nawala dahil dito,”, Ochoa said.
Ochoa also noted that the personal experience and the political experience intersected in death. “The struggle of embracing the whole process of grieving, it just messes up your head,” they added.
Still, they said that they had to put Ian’s death out on social media to show people that it could have been avoided had the administration not neglected the need to properly fund and prioritize the health sector.
Ochoa added that the government could have taken measures to mitigate the crisis from as early as 2019. “Kung hindi lang tuta si Duterte ng China, sana buhay pa ‘yung mga kaibigan natin, ‘yung mga pamilya natin. So, it boils down to the political playground dito sa Pilipinas na because they were trying to serve their personal interests over the interests of the masses, ngayon, kapalit ‘yung buhay ng mga Pilipinong ito,” they said.
Ochoa mentioned that they wanted to politicize Ian’s death as they were a drag queen, and consequently, their career was rooted in politics.
“Drag in itself is a political statement because we take ourselves out of the narrative of patriarchy. We destroy gender norms of what cis-heteronormativity is, so ngayon, I just want to abide by the career of Ian,” they said.
On the frontlines
Our doctors and nurses are not to blame for turning down even the most critical cases of COVID-19. Grueling work hours, little to no hazard pay, and a weak health care system are only a few of the innumerable troubles that burden our healthcare workers.
In an interview, Dr. Gene Nisperos, a doctor from the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) and assistant professor at the University of the Philippines (UP), pointed out how the incompetencies and weaknesses in our healthcare system, coupled with sheer unpreparedness and lack of urgency, has translated into a poor pandemic response.
“‘Yung healthcare system ng Pilipinas, matagal nang mahina, matagal na siyang hindi sumasagot sa pangangailangan ng tao. Darating ang pandemya, ano ang lalabas dyan? Alam mong ‘yung kahinaan na iyon mas lalo pang ma-ma-magnify, lalo pa siyang lalaki,” Dr. Nisperos said.
He also mentioned how much the worsening public health crisis strains our country’s medical professionals—or at least what’s left of them. Despite being the number one exporter of nurses in the world, the Philippines has resorted to calling for volunteers as a result of not being able to hire enough health workers. Aside from the inadequate pay they receive, nurses and doctors alike are left overburdened, doing at least thrice the work they ought to do.
Dr. Kenneth Gacula, a PGH frontliner, also shared the psychosocial impact of COVID-19 on medical personnel like him as he and his colleagues were once infected by the virus.
“Once we knew that we were infected, we had to go to isolation so we don’t know kung kumusta ‘yung isa, kumusta ‘yung ginagawa ng other co-workers namin,” Dr. Gacula said. “There’s this guilt—am I the one that infected my co-workers? Moreso, the guilt that I may have infected my patients or my family members.”
An unresponsive response
Although it goes without saying that we could do something to keep ourselves safe, most of the decisions that could have thwarted the spread of COVID-19 in the country were out of our hands. Whether or not Filipino citizens are afforded their right to healthcare, we should not rely on initiative alone.
“Health and medical services are basic human rights. When we’re talking about basic human rights, of course, that is expected of the government,” Belmonte said.
Thousands of lives were lost during the pandemic, and every single death was avoidable. For this, we must hold authorities accountable for their negligence—in the past and in handling the health crisis—and for the deaths it has caused.
Holes in our country’s health care system were amplified as COVID cases in the country surged. Hospitals and health centers around the country proved to be severely under-equipped and understaffed. To add insult to injury, there were little to no measures taken against the virus in its early stages. Travel bans were not placed until a few days after the first recorded COVID case in the country. Furthermore, efficient mass testing and contact tracing were given no importance. Instead of tackling the crisis with science-based solutions, the state took a militaristic and punitive approach, ultimately leading to surges upon surges of cases.
To this day, we have yet to see decent countermeasures against the virus. As Dr. Nisperos states: “Band-aid solutions would [indicate] that [our response] is in the right direction—it’s failing, it’s not doing its job, [it’s not] a temporary measure.”
A year into the pandemic, the government still uses its ineffective punitive approach—former military officials or retired police generals lead the response, and more focus is given on reprimanding quarantine violators rather than addressing the problem that forces such people to go out despite the restrictions. In addition, dissent, criticism, and sometimes even initiatives like community pantries are met with threats and arrests.
After starting the community pantry movement through her food bank in Maginhawa St. Quezon City, Ana Patricia Non faced numerous death threats and red-tagging, causing her to temporarily suspend her pantry’s operations.
Actress Angel Locsin also received criticism for her birthday community pantry in Quezon City as a large crowd showed up and overwhelmed organizers. While waiting in line, a senior citizen collapsed and was later pronounced dead.
Jan Belmonte calls on people to be candid with their criticism and demand accountability from authorities whose negligence has led to the loss of thousands of lives.
In his words: “If we are mad at Angel Locsin for the death of one grandfather, we should demand the government for better, when it comes to the death of thousands of people.”
References:
https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/05/11/21/maginhawa-community-pantry-organizer-gets-death-rape-threats
Death, huge crowd shut down Angel Locsin’s birthday community pantry
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/philippines-covid-19-surge-tears-through-families-lives
HiLites ASHS 