EDITORIAL — It is just the way we are

The Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center and the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center are two government facilities built for very different purposes but which now share the common problem of severe congestion.

In the case of the BBRC, it is a jail meant to house only 250 inmates but which now holds about 3,000. Adding to its woes are the hordes of people who come to visit, most of them family members, many of whom mysteriously get to stay overnight.

As for the hospital, its problem with severe congestion is caused not so much by the number of patients it accommodates but by the sheer volume of people, mostly also family members, who come not just to visit but to stay with their confined relatives.

The similarity between the problems, however, ends there. While nothing seems to work at the BBRC, officials at the VSMMC are at least doing something that has a good chance of working. And it is nothing fancy, just a simple ID system. No ID, no entry. Works all the time.

Right now, officials at the hospital admit it is bursting at the seams with about 14,000 people within its confines on a given day, the vast majority of them not patients but visitors. With IDs, they plan to whittle down this sea of humanity to something wieldy, like 4,000 a day.

What is interesting about this whole thing is that the problem actually has something to do with the kind of people that we are. That means that while we may or may not find ways to wriggle out of the problem, the problem will always be there for as long as we are who we are.

Filipinos are among the most family-oriented people in the world. If we can hold on to one another, we would. We never let go. And the modern technologies that have effectively shrunk global distances have helped reinforce this uniquely Filipino trait of putting family first.

Thus, in sickness and in health, and for better or for worse, will hospitals and jails always be the uncanny manifestations of the workings and strength of Filipino families. We may need to curb excesses in these manifestations. But there is no eliminating what comes naturally.