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| Sunrise at Sabang beach, Baler, Aurora. |
BALER, Aurora, January 17, 2012-Governor Bellaflor Angara-Castillo is now working for the hiring of additional medical manpower to equip the newly completed P594-million project of the new Aurora Memorial hospital (AMH) at the 3.8 hectare site in Brgy. Reserva with highly competent medical specialists, nurses and other personnels who will cater Aurorans and nearby provinces.
The governor said, for almost 20 years or since the devolution of public hospitals to the provincial government, district hospitals suffered from lack of specialized medical personnel resulting sometimes to the poor delivery of medical services since the old AMH is now almost 70 years old; thus, Angara-Castillo form her medical consultants into a pool of medical specialists who are on call and will serve as roving doctors to the hospital to cope with the medical needs and services of the hospital.
“I and other provincial officials recently met to map out plans and strategies to ensure the effective and efficient management and operations of the public hospitals under the supervision of the provincial capitol,” Angara-Castillo said.
The governor said that the provincial health and budget gave the provincial government officials several suggestions to properly address their concerns on the hiring and placement of competent and capable medical specialists and staff to ensure quality hospital service.
“I suggested that chiefs of hospitals, doctors and nurses to undergo trainings on hospital administration which the University of the Philippines offers through distance learning program to further improve the management of these government hospitals,” Angara-Castillo said, pointing out that the good of hospital services lies on the managerial skills of hospital chiefs, and on their constant coordination with their staff, patients and even to the community.
“Aside from our present doctors and nurses, we have now a new anesthesiologist and affiliate surgeon but still there is a pressing need for more medical specialists,” Angara-Castillo stressed.
Relative to this, Dr. Luisito G. Teh, provincial health officer said that since the turned over of the Japanese to Aurora provincial government last December 14, 2011, they were all in dry-run and familiarization of the newly state-of-the-art newly hospital equipment’s and facilities.
“We are all in hospital reforms to cope up with the latest technology of the hospital that was granted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA),” Teh said.
Back to Angara-Castillo, she said that the scheduled setup for the hospital full operation on Aurora Day Celebration is now elastic due to the possible visits of President Aquino in the province particularly in the hospital.
It could be remembered that the old AMH has only 25-bed capacity hospital’s license was even lowered from Level 2 to Level 1 when the Department of Health clamped down on hospitals without a trained surgeon and an anesthesiologist; thus, the Angaras sought assistance from the Japanese government which, in response, conducted a preparatory survey in January 2009 and dispatched a basic design team in June of that same year.
On March 15, 2010, the Exchange of Notes was signed in Manila by then-Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo and Japanese Ambassador Makoto Katsura. (Jason de Asis)
