Free CT Scan services for poor Manileños

Manila Mayor Lito Atienza signed a memorandum of agreement with Mediscan Diagnostic Center to provide free Computed Tomography or CT Scan services at the Ospital ng Maynila to further improve delivery of health care services for Manileños under Atienza’s Buhayin ang Maynila program.

The Ospital ng Maynila, although equipped with X-ray and fluoroscopic units and an ultrasound imaging module, needed a CT Scan for diagnostic techniques to detect tumors, blood clots, hemorrhages and schemic changes that will help confirm clinical suspicions or impressions, thus facilitating timely therapeutics and patients prognostication.

The city government, realizing the demand, now provides free CT Scan services for constituents who cannot afford the high cost of the procedure.

"Our Ospital ng Maynila is now providing poor Manileños with free CT Scan procedures with the help of the private sector as the city government continues to improve on the delivery of its health services," Atienza said.

The social services staff will classify patients to validate legitimacy of Manila residents and indigency status. The CT Scan services will be paid by the city government to ensure that the sick indigent Manileños are provided with the best medical care.

It can be recalled that the Ospital ng Maynila re-opened to the public its newly renovated Emergency Room, Infirmary Ward and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (Nursery) last May primarily to serve Manileños better.

The Emergency Room can accommodate 300 to 400 acutely ill and seriously injured patients daily.

On the other hand, the Infirmary Ward that was designed for employees of the city government of Manila, barangay officials and Philhealth members and their dependents can accommodate 60 patients. Fifteen window-type aircon units were put in its rooms.

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit can accommodate 80 to100 healthy newborns and pathologic ones.

Moreover, the Ospital ng Maynila also acquired 250 brand new hospital beds, two incubators and two respirators.

Last year, the Department of Surgery of the Ospital ng Maynila received an Asian Management Award and early this year it won the prestigious Anvil Award for its Wholistic Social Responsibility Program.