Dozens of Sulu residents undergo free surgical procedures

COTABATO CITY — More than a hundred marginalized residents of Sulu availed of surgical procedures facilitated for free by physicians as part of the Kasama MOH sa Kalusugan Program of the Bangsamoro health ministry. 

Radio reports in Cotabato City on Wednesday stated that 56 of the 162 patients who benefitted from the activity had undergone major surgical interventions at the Sulu Provincial Hospital in Jolo town early this week, facilitated by medical teams of the Ministry of Health-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

BARMM’s health minister, the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Monera Sinolinding Jr., told reporters that the 162 patients from different towns in Sulu underwent herniorrhaphy, thyroidectomy, hydrocoelectomy, cholecystectomy, hemorrhoidectomy, excision of mandibular mass and cyst, mastectomy, excision of auricular spots, fistulectomy, sequestrectomy and marsupialization of bartholin cysts.

Sinolinding said their Kasama MOH sa Kalusugan Program is being implemented jointly by the MoH-BARMM and its provincial offices in the autonomous region and the office of Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Ebrahim.

Sinolinding said they will continue to extend health services to residents of Sulu while waiting for the execution of a Supreme Court ruling, released last Monday, that virtually dismembered Sulu from among the provinces under the Bangsamoro region.

The Supreme Court had stated that Sulu is not a component-province of BARMM since local voters had voted against the area’s inclusion into the proposed core territory of the autonomous region during a plebiscite in 2019.

Sinolinding said they would initiate extensive dialogues with MoH-BARMM personnel in Sulu on how to deal with the issue to prevent a sudden hiatus, or vacuum in the delivery of their ministry’s basic services to the local communities.