ILOILO City – The increasing number of confirmed cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in this city and Iloilo province are making people anxious and extremely self-protective bordering on discrimination.
Alarmed local officials are appealing for compassion.
The discrimination is felt more strongly in municipalities with confirmed local COVID-19 transmissions – Guimbal and Lambunao. People from these towns seeking treatment for medical conditions other than COVID-19 are being turned away by hospitals in the city and province.
“Discrimination will destroy our society, not the virus,” warned AAMBIS-Owwa party-list’s Rep. Sharon Garin who has a pregnant staff scheduled for caesarean delivery.
The staff proceeded to the Iloilo Doctors’ Hospital but she was turned away, according to Garin.
Dejected, Garin said, her staff went to the West Visayas State University Medical Center but she was also turned down.
“My staff will be all right. We will do our utmost to sort this out. But this should not have happened,” Garin said.
It all started on March 31 when the Department of Health (DOH) Region 6 summarily classified as persons under monitoring (PUMs) for possible COVID-19 infection all residents of Guimbal after a case of local COVID-19 transmission was confirmed there.
DOH-6 eventually reversed its declaration after much criticism.
But Garin lamented, “Thoughtlessness exacerbates discrimination.”
She appealed to all Ilonggos, “Don’t let the virus kill our humanity.”
In Lambunao, the house of the town’s first case of COVID-19 was pelted with stones following the DOH-6’s confirmation on Friday that four other members of the patient’s family – the wife and their three children – also tested positive for the disease.
Sangguniang Panlalawigan member Jason Gonzales, former mayor of Lambunao, wondered where human empathy went.
He revealed that residents of his municipality with medical conditions other than COVID-19 and seeking treatment in Iloilo City hospitals and other district hospitals in the province were being rejected.
The reason cited, according to Gonzales, was that Lambunao’s Dr. Ricardo Y. Ladrido Memorial Hospital (DRYMH) – a provincial government-run district hospital – is catering to persons under investigation (PUI) for possible COVID-19 infection.
DRYMH has been designated by DOH-6 as medical facility in Iloilo where PUIs with mild symptoms should be confined.
“As a result of this designation, coupled with confirmed COVID-19 infections in our town, our residents have been stigmatized,” lamented Gonzales
DRYMH frontliners are also bearing the brunt of this hospital designation that the municipality of Lambunao did not ask for, he added.
“In fact, our mayor campaigned against it,” said Gonzales.
Also because of such designation, the Provincial Board member said, DRYMH was forced to close its general and pediatric services, although it can still receive emergency medical cases.
“I am calling for compassion on the part of administrators of other hospitals in the province and city of Iloilo. Do not discriminate Lambunao residents who seek treatment in your hospitals,” said Gonzales.
Lambunao is taking great risk by taking in PUI patients from various municipalities thus, Gonzales said, the least that Ilonggos can do is show compassion to Lambunaonons./PN
