According to a Visual-Asia report:
About 92 percent of Filipinos in urban areas and 80 percent in rural areas have access to potable water while 92 percent in urban areas and 71 percent in rural areas have sanitation facilities at home.
The Department of Health reported that the country had 1,794 hospitals with 83,491 beds nationwidein 1999. Only 648 or 36 percent of these hospitals are government-owned while the remaining 1,146 hospitals or 64 percent are privately owned. For every 10,000 Filipinos, there were only 11.2 hospital beds.
Apart from hospitals though, there were other medical establishments in the country.
The Department of Health said that in 1998, there were about 2,405 rural health units and 14,267 barangay health stations in the whole country. There are over 42,000 barangays or villages in the Philippines. Doctors and nurses would visit these rural health units while midwives or nurses would visit the barangay health units at least once a week.
The government health department had in its payroll some 2,848 doctors, 1,713 dentists, 4,389 nurses, and 14,962 midwives as of 1998.
But that is far from enough.
On TV, there was a news story about the outbreak of typhus in Real and Infanta, Quezon. What if such horrible thing happens here? How are we going to take care of our people? Will we just wait for medical products to be donated by some NGO's or rush to the nearest city to avail of medical services?
Maybe, this is the reason why the requirement for city has been raised. If a town can earn as much as P 100 M each year, it could afford to run a public hospital with complete equipment, say, X-Ray machines, CT Scanner, EKG machines, etc. Even just the basic medical equipment will do as long as the needs of the people will be addressed.
I understand that our officials here are doing something. I just wish that they will give priority on establishing a medical facility here. There have been other projects that our local government has worked on, maybe its time for us to see a hospital being built here.
***
Actually, I am sick right now. But it's a hassle and it's costly to go to the hospital in the city to have my case checked up. For people like me, and those that are even poorer than me and have illness that are worse that what I have now, going to the hospital is burden. So, they just stay at home, and wait until miracles heal them. But with a hospital in our town, everyone's health will be taken care of.