The recent acquisition of advanced diagnostic equipment and critical care facilities at the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) is helping ensure that even indigent Filipinos can have free access to high-quality healthcare at the country’s largest tertiary hospital.
UP-PGH currently provides a wide range of healthcare services to over 700,000 patients annually while serving as the premier institution in training future healthcare professionals.
The hospital recently inaugurated a combined imaging capability in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Computed Tomography (CT)—better known as PET-CT scan equipment—for more comprehensive diagnostics. In addition, a new centralized intensive care unit is now capable of accommodating 32 patients at a time and a 128-slice CT Scan. All of these developments form part of UP-PGH’s long-term masterplan.
UP-PGH Director Dr. Gerardo Legaspi acknowledged the long four-year wait for the first-ever PET-CT scan facility to be procured by the Philippine government. “But now that it’s here, we have leveled the field for poor patients, who will be using this machine 80% of the time versus 20% for paying patients,” Legaspi said, adding that the PET-CT scan procedure can accommodate up to eight patients a day at present and will be scaled up to 15 once operations become more regular. “We need this machine badly because it has become central to the diagnosis of cancer, a major concern of our healthcare system.”
A typical PET scan uses small amounts of radioactive material injected into the bloodstream to helps detect diseases like cancer, heart disease, and brain disorders at an early stage by showing how tissues and organs are functioning. A CT scan, on the other hand, uses x-rays to show cross-sectional images of the body's internal structure, helping pinpoint the exact location of abnormalities detected by the PET scan. A combined PET-CT scan can provide both functional and structural information in a single session for doctors to get a more comprehensive inside view of what's happening in the patient’s body.
PGH is coordinating with the Department of Health (DOH) on how to make this service available to non-PGH patients. DOH personnel will also be trained on its use alongside doctors under the UP-PGH residency program, Legaspi said. He added that the facility will be operated in collaboration with specialists and experts from other hospitals.
Legaspi noted the steady expansion of UP-PGH’s capabilities from basic healthcare to advanced medical interventions that have benefited poor patients in particular. “A market vendor in Paco, Manila who had a heart attack was wheeled into the emergency room, went through angiography, and had a stent implanted to prevent his artery from blocking up again—all in one to two hours, free of charge.” He acknowledged that many public hospitals around the Philippines are now able to deliver similar services.
“The first patient to undergo robotic surgery in UP-PGH was a jeepney driver,” he recalled. “Furthermore, cochlear implants worth a million pesos each are now available to indigent children who will be able to hear clearly for the first time in their lives.”
Also in the growing list of UP-PGH interventions are those for breast cancer patients who can have a tumor removed followed by a one-time radiation treatment through intraoperative radiotherapy or IORT, foregoing the need for the usual 10 to 20 days of radiation therapy. Additionally, the neurosurgeons of PGH are implanting deep brain stimulation devices on patients suffering from the rare Lubag disease or X-linked dystonia parkinsonism (XDP) that occurs almost exclusively on males from Panay island, which stops the disease’s debilitating effects; and perform high frequency focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatment for tremors related to parkinsonism as an additional option for Lubag patients. The HIFU for brain intervention is only found in UP-PGH in the country and only the second in Southeast Asia. The hospital also has a transcranial magnetic stimulation unit, which sends electromagnetic waves to the brain for faster healing of patients with depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and addiction. Recently PGH installed a robotic gait trainer machine in its rehabilitation medicine department to further improve the capability of disabled patients to recover their functions.
Legaspi said the new equipment allowed UP-PGH to do medical procedures that were otherwise expensive to obtain from private hospitals or may not even be available in most of them.
He thanked the Philippine government for its continuing attention to UP-PGH. The hospital’s P7.72-billion outlay in 2024 is a large portion of the UP budget, comprising one-third of the total amount allocated to the country’s premier state university. The rest of UP’s budget goes to its academic programs.
Legaspi explained that as a teaching hospital, “UP-PGH shapes its curriculum to produce not just clinicians but also healthcare managers and administrators who are essential for achieving a responsive universal healthcare system.”