The Pangasinan Star ONLINE

AFTER ALL
Behn Fer. Hortaleza, Jr.


WE can hardly blame Drs. Jackson Soriano and Jess Canto, top directors of the Pangasinan Provincial Hospital and the Region 1 Medical Center, respectively for bearing down hard on one of their own, Dr. Reynaldo Jacinto, standards and regulations division chief of the Bureau of Food and Drugs regional office, a bureau under the same Department of Health they all work in

Soriano and Canto were visibly dismayed by the absence of Jacinto during the committee hearing called by the sangguniang panlalawigan committee on health late last week to learn firsthand from the BFAD official just who are the “government doctors” he had linked in his media pronouncements as being in cahoots with suppliers of counterfeit drugs. It would have been their chance, along with the provincial board members now itching to put Jacinto on the burner too over the same pronouncements, to either confirm or dismiss outright Jacinto’s rather unfair allegations.

Whether it was arthritis or something else that kept the BFAD man away, the fact is with his absence, he had only managed to bolster the angry claims of “government doctors” represented by Soriano, Canto and the other chiefs of hospitals from the eastern, central and western part of the province that he was only really talking thru his hat.

Frankly though, we have the sneaking suspicion that even the hospital directors know, within themselves, there could be a grain – or whole grains – of truth in Jacinto’s controversial statements. If only the BFAD would be more forthright, they’d know better how to deal with their “erring” fellow docs and perhaps finally erase the cloud of doubt hanging above their heads after Jacinto’s verbal caper. No doubt Jacinto had seen that “list “captured from some arrested counterfeit drugs couriers earlier and holds the names in there right inside his head.

His would be an easier mental burden to bear if he would only – even in just an executive session with the provincial officials – bare the names in confidence to make things easy for everyone including himself. As an irked Board Member John Agerico Rosario blurted out when it was clear Jacinto wasn’t going to show up, the sangguniang panlalawigan committees won’t take the “BFAD snub” lying down.

Your move, Doc Rey!

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We are challenging the gallant congressmen of Pangasinan to move as one in the face of the threat of a worldwide avian flu and put money where the health and welfare of their constituents are by funding the acquisition of vital equipment and buildup of emergency facilities in our local medical institutions. Foremost, and we believe it is still possible, should be the construction of negative pressure rooms in Pangasinan hospitals where those afflicted by the deadly disease can be possibly held to contain its spread.

We read in the papers many provinces already taking stock of their resources to handle the coming pandemic, not only thru the acquisition of anti-viral medicines and improvement of facilities but also the identification and designation of other areas where the sick can be taken when hospitals are overfilled in a worst-case scenario.

Everyone should take the cue from Health Secretary Pingcoy Duque himself who said it is not a matter of “if” but “when” the avian flu hits us in the Philippines.

Write your congressmen by mail or by –email, or by any means of contact available to ask them to part with a precious million each at their disposal for medical facility buildup now – instead of their usual road, bridges, computers, reading centers and basketball courts predilection for spending. What use are all these, pray tell, if people who should be enjoying or using these, are falling down like flies on a flystick paper?

We are not alarming people; we are simply forewarning them. Better to look like a fool now, than being tragically sorry later.