3 hospitals boost capability to undertake heart procedures

MANILA, Philippines - Three public hospitals capable of undertaking heart procedures are boosting government’s efforts to make health services accessible to Filipinos, the Department of Health (DOH) reported yesterday.

The three hospitals are the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) in Davao City; the Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) in Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental, and the Bicol Regional Teaching and Training Hospital (BRTTH) in Legazpi City, Albay.

“A patient need not travel to Manila just to undergo heart surgery. We now have a number of DOH-retained hospitals that are capable of performing heart procedures with comparable expertise and precision at a much lower rate,” said Health Secretary Enrique Ona.

Records from the Department of Health (DOH) show the SPMC had performed a total of 1,158 cardiac catheterization procedures from 2007 to January this year, next only to the Philippine Heart Center (PHC), the country’s leading hospital for heart ailments.

The NMMC had conducted five heart surgeries from March 22 to 23 last year.  Among the patients were two children with patent ductus arteriosus, one with atrial myxoma and two others with ventricular septal defect.

For its part, the BRTTH had done 30 coronary angiographic procedures in 2008; 39 in 2009; 76 each in 2010 and 2011; 100 in 2012, and 39 in the first quarter of 2013.

The DOH is now developing five other hospitals nationwide so they could also treat patients with heart disease.

Ona said with eight more hospitals doing heart procedures, the PHC would definitely be decongested.

“The government is determined to achieve Kalusugan Pangkalahatan for all Filipinos through state-of-the-art technologies, health facility improvements and health promotion from the northernmost part of Luzon to the Visayas to the farthest south of Mindanao,” he said.