ILOILO City – Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC) in Mandurriao district has been accredited by the Department of Health (DOH) as testing center for possible coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in the region.
Rep. Julienne “Jam-jam” Baronda of the Lone District of Iloilo expressed gratitude to the DOH for granting her request for such accreditation.
“I thank the Department of Health for positively responding. WVMC is now the COVID-19 Testing Center in Region 6,” Baronda said in a press statement yesterday after receiving the DOH letter about the accreditation dated March 18 and signed by Assistant Health Secretary Kenneth Ronquillo.
WVMC is now lined up “for capacitating through proficiency testing and training of laboratory personnel. DOH expects to activate key hospitals and medical centers, like WVMC, after it is done activating ‘sub-national laboratories’ (SNLs) as it adopts the so-called ‘highest-value strategy’ in attending to the COVID-19 threat,” Baronda shared the good news.
During the committee hearing of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Health on March 11, Baronda verbally manifested her request to Health Secretary Francisco Duque III for the accreditation of WVMC as testing center for suspected COVID-19 cases. She also handed a written request to the DOH chief.
The House Assistant Majority Floor Leader requested for the accreditation because she did not want delays in the testing of possible COVID-19 patients.
“Time is of the essence. We don’t want delays in getting the results from Manila, so that early on we already asked that WVMC be made to do the test. We don’t want interventions delayed because the diagnosis is hanging. The disease management should start the soonest so that those infected have better chances of recovery,” she told Panay News.
Baronda vowed to continue communicating and coordinating with the DOH and other national government agencies “so that WVMC personnel are trained at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine at the soonest opportunity possible.”
Working from home as she is on a self-imposed quarantine, Baronda coordinated for the transport of specimen samples by her Congressional Office staff from Villamor Airbase to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine on Wednesday. The samples were flown by Philippine Air Force from Iloilo City as well as Tacloban and Cebu cities.
Her staff also claimed swab supplies and personal protective gears from the DOH Central Office on Thursday and brought these to the Batangas Port and Manila ports, respectively, to be shipped to Iloilo City through 2Go and Philippine Coast Guard vessels.
Baronda vowed to “not stop working with the DOH Central Office and the Center for Health Development-6 to make sure that Ilonggos get the health service they need in these trying times.”
Baronda, who continues to be healthy and has not shown any COVID-19 symptom while entering her second week of self-quarantine, asked “everyone to cooperate and heed the measures that our national and local governments are doing for everyone’s welfare. I ask our dear Ilonggos to abide by the Enhanced Community Quarantine which Mayor Jerry Treñas is implementing.”
She also thanked Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go for the assistance and likewise commended and thanked the health frontliners for delivering selfless public service despite the risks.
Baronda implored everyone to pray.
“Let us continue to unite in prayer as we battle this crisis. With our God behind us, we will triumph,” she said.
Yesterday, Mayor Treñas announced that a DOH-accredited medical technologist would test persons under investigation (PUIs) here today, March 21.
He said he received a call from Health secretary Francisco Duque about this.
The city government expects 100 test kits for coronavirus disease to arrive any time from Manila.
“Under the DOH’s updated decision tool, only the elderly, those with underlying medical conditions and those with ailments which have progressed to ‘severe to critical’ would be tested for the COVID-19 virus,” Treñas said.
DOH is also working on several laboratories in Iloilo to “try to accredit medical technologists and centers to read the tests,” he added./PN
