UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Two nights ago, I came across a story on social media that really shook me to the core. Someone posted that she encountered a man and his young daughter living on the sidewalk of a major thoroughfare in Quezon City. The child was obviously unwell with a bandage around her head, and the father was trying to comfort her by rocking her to sleep.
She was very moved by the scene and decided to go back to help by buying some food for them. The man’s story was that the child grew up on the streets but was a Grade 1 student in a public school in Cubao. Recently, she asked to use a toilet but slipped and hit her head on the floor, rendering her unconscious. He rushed her to a nearby big government hospital but she wasn’t admitted due to the required CT scan for which he didn’t have the money to pay for. So, they ended up on the street again, begging for money to buy food and hoping nothing serious happens to the girl.
The woman Good Samaritan started feeling anger over their life situation, noting the irony of their location which was between a tertiary private hospital and a seminary. The system has obviously failed them, and she knew it is time for a change, a big change in our unresponsive and uncaring society.
What went through my mind was that there probably are hundreds, if not thousands of such homeless families living on the streets, eking out an existence through begging, and for the desperate, by petty theft.
But the doctor in me was raging against the thought that this child could have had severe head trauma, which can endanger her life. But will somebody care? How could this big government hospital, if the story is true, deny emergency care for an obviously wounded child claiming inability to admit her without a CT scan when it could be a life-or-death situation?
PhilHealth has provisions for indigent patients, and this father and child are obviously destitute and indigent. Yet, the staff of that hospital turned them away.
Whatever happened to the Hippocratic oath that we, doctors, have sworn at the start of our careers? One of the four principles that we swore to uphold is that of Justice – to treat all people equally and equitably. In the modern world, where medical care is compensated for by the government (partially anyway), it is difficult to put the patient’s welfare first. But PhilHealth has given us guidelines on the compensation of doctors and hospitals for the care given to indigents, and this fact alone should have given that hospital the impetus to actively care for the injured child.
The family may not have applied for and gotten the paperwork for accessing the medical system. However, that is the reason hospitals have social workers, whose job is to assist those in need. Failure to tap this important resource is the fault of the emergency room physician, and this is not an excuse to turn away the patient.
As the former deputy director for Professional Services for the Philippine Childrens Medical Center, I have always been made aware of such situations in the emergency room. Yet, we always found ways to help the needy in accessing the medical care their children needed. If I were still in that position, and was made aware of this child’s situation, I would have dispatched the ambulance to pick up this child and bring her to the PCMC emergency room for evaluation and immediate treatment. A CT scan would definitely have been done to assess the child for brain trauma, the expense of which can be charged against some congressman’s ayuda funds. Even with the hospital CT scan out of order, we would have transported the child to a CT scan facility nearby, as we always did.
But being retired from that position, there is not much I can do but reach out to the hospital’s current leadership to make them aware of that child’s condition. My being out of the country at the moment is also frustrating. Were I back home, I would have visited this father and child to assess her condition. Instead, I am writing this story to make people aware and hope that some Good Samaritan will come by and whisk them off to an emergency room.
There are surely many more families living on the streets and suffering from exposure, hunger and disease. This is a blight on modern society which our politicians should work on to improve their lives, rather than engaging in political gimmicks of ayuda in aid of election/reelection. Is one of them good enough to take this one on and introduce legislation to improve these people’s lives?
What gives, senators, congressmen and congresswomen?