The indomitable spirit of the Cebuano lives
It was the first huge negative news for us in Cebu City where someone can just put on a disguise and pretend to be one of the nurses at the Vicente Sotto Medical Center and then cart away a two-day-old baby and take the baby to her house. But then this huge negative news for Cebu became one huge success story for us in Cebu where the citizenry felt the outrage and the anguish of a mother who sacrificed for nine months and two days, and after delivery the baby is taken out without her knowledge and consent.
A great salute to us Cebuanos… clap your hands to the true indomitable Cebuano spirit of concern for our fellow Cebuanos… for someone in the neighborhood of Barangay Lahug who saw a woman, later identified as Melissa Londres, who had a new born babe in her arms, but was never seen pregnant. This is the attitude we want from our fellow Cebuanos… to help the police in times of trouble so problems can immediately be solved. This is one great example of Cebuanos helping out a beleaguered community!
Of course the Cebu media especially the radio broadcasters made so much noise over this incident… to the point that when the neighbors saw the woman with a newborn baby in their barangay, they called the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and Chief Inspector Delfin Bontuyan himself led the team to Barangay Lahug and arrested the woman, who turned out to be a call center agent. Great news beginnings for 2016!
Now the newborn baby whose name is Prince Niño Celadenio has been returned to his parents. But this leaves us with many questions like, why did Melissa Londres get to all the pains to abduct the infant by wearing a nurse's outfit and only to be arrested a day later? Of course it is easy for us to blame that she was high on drugs, which is probably true.
But perhaps she really wanted to have a child of her own. Mind you… this is not an issue of poverty because call center agents are paid even much higher salaries than bank employees! So there is something deeper that psychologists ought to find out and analyze what happened to her. That she had a live-in partner only shows her lack of morals or spirituality. This is why despite the fact that she has a good job…somehow something was missing in her life… after all, money or the lack of it isn't everything.
Meanwhile I'm sure that VSMMC Medical chief Dr. Gerardo Aquino and the Department of Health-7 assistant regional director Dr. Sophia Mancao would be looking at the security or the lack of it at the VSMMC. But we all know that today there could be a heightened security measures at this medical facility. But this always happens when something gets amiss and the security personnel get more aware than the usual.
However what happens weeks after today after this issue dies down? Shall we get back to our usual uncaring ways? This is a very ugly but very Filipino trait to fall back into complacency. In my book, VSMMC officials must look for better ways to secure their premises, not by adding more guards, but rather by being more diligent and smart!
May I suggest to Dr. Mancao and Dr. Aquino for them to study what the US Seventh Fleet does with their aircraft carrier operations. I'm sure you can see this if you Google it. When they launch an F-18 Hornet, the fighter plane is surrounded by ground crew which on an aircraft carrier could be very confusing as there are just too many ground crew on the flight deck.
So what the US Navy does is color key each personnel to their job description. For instance the guys in red handle ordnance (bombs and missiles) while the guys in green coveralls help launch the plane into the catapult, while the guys in purple shirts take care of the fuel. The folks in yellow shirts help clean the decks and push the plane if they need to. The blue shirts are the ones that help position the plane for takeoff in the catapult.
This can be done at the VSMMC with nurses who help in the emergency wearing a particular color… maybe in red. While nurses in charge of newborn babies should be wearing a different color, blue for boys and pink for girls… of course with a complete name tag. Then nurses who go around in the hospital to check on patients should also be wearing a uniform in a different color. This way, a huge hospital like the VSMMC can be run more efficiently and it is easy to spot a particular nurse to her or his job description by the color of her or his uniform.
Of course the hero in this drama is the Closed Circuit TV because without it, it would have been difficult to check who really stole the new born baby. VSMMC should add more CCTV cameras in and around the medical facility's premises. But more importantly, the security personnel who handle the CCTV by watching those 16 cameras must have the proper shifting so that fresh eyes would always be looking for anything amiss.
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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected] or [email protected]. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com
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