SINCE assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Finance in 2019, we have been committed towards strengthening our public health care system.
Providing access to quality health care to all, particularly to our disadvantaged countrymen, is one of the most important responsibilities of government.
Every year when we tackle the proposed national budgets, we are faced with never ending requests for funding for our health care facilities, including the specialized care centers.
Specialty hospitals such as the Lung Center of the Philippines, the Philippine Heart Center (PHC) and the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) perform critical, life-saving work for Filipinos who are suffering from respiratory and renal diseases.
As one of the proponents of the Universal Health Care Law, providing affordable, if not free medical care for all has been one of our priorities and as such we continuously provide support to our health care facilities through our interventions in the national budget and in our personal capacity.
Under the 2024 General Appropriations Act, we sustained our support to the Lung Center of the Philippines as the country’s preeminent institution for the treatment of lung diseases. In particular, we augmented the Lung Center’s budget to help it attain its goal of becoming the first hospital in the country to perform a successful human lung transplant.
We initially provided funding for this purpose in 2022 and for 2024, we increased the maintenance and other operating expenses and capital outlay allocations for the Lung Center to bring this goal to fruition. Once it is able to perform a successful human lung transplant, the hospital notes that the barrier for its inclusion among the world-class thoracic surgical centers will be removed.
The Lung Center has the distinction of having provided complete treatment for the most number of lung cancer patients among all health institutions in the country. This starts from diagnosis to surgery to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, including endobronchial brachytherapy. We want the hospital to continue its work in detecting and treating lung cancer patients.
As it is with any disease, early detection is key to successful treatments and saving lives. This is why we also augmented the budget of the Lung Center for the implementation of the early detection of lung cancer. Once detected, patients will undergo surgical activities to be followed by radiotherapy or chemotherapy.
Another leading cause of death in the Philippines is chronic kidney disease. Individuals afflicted with this ailment have to undergo a lifetime of hemodialysis treatments unless they are among the lucky few who are eligible for a kidney transplant.
Considering that a significant number of patients with chronic kidney disease go to the NKTI to seek treatment, we made it a point to also increase funding for the hospital in order for it to serve all who approach it continuously and to accommodate even more in the future.
While the dialysis sessions of the patients are covered by PhilHealth for one year, the patients still have to pay for the other expenses such as the dialyzer, which is a disposable tool used to remove excess wastes and fluids from the blood; the erythropoietin, which stimulates red blood cell production; and other maintenance medicines. The additional funds we provided for NKTI is intended to cover all the patients’ expenses when they go in for dialysis sessions.
In order for the NKTI to serve even more patients, we also increased the allocation for medical assistance to indigent patients and financed the cost for the conversion of clinics and existing old and dilapidated rooms to patient rooms.
We also funded the request of the NKTI to put up a peritoneal dialysis warehouse for simulation and skills laboratory training center. This will serve as a training laboratory for peritoneal dialysis, which is an alternative treatment of hemodialysis for kidney failure.
For the PHC, which is recognized as the country’s leading cardiovascular care center, we introduced a number of interventions aimed at improving the systems and processes of the institution for the overall benefit of its patients. This includes the long overdue upgrading of its digital cardiac MRI that will not only allow the accommodation of more patients, but will also provide doctors with an accurate diagnosis prior to a surgical procedure and the degree of recovery after surgery.
Funds were also provided for PHC to procure two new heart lung machines and a cardiac telemetry monitoring system.
The needs of our health facilities will never end but for as long as we are able to do something to help, we will continue to do so. It is the government’s obligation to provide for the medical requirements of our people, particularly to those who have less in life. We want to avoid the situation where individuals would outright skip seeking medical help because they have no means to do so.
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Senator Sonny Angara has been in public service for 19 years—9 years as Representative of the Lone District of Aurora, and 10 as Senator. He has authored, co-authored, and sponsored more than 330 laws. He is currently serving his second term in the Senate.
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Email: sensonnyangara@yahoo.com| Facebook, Twitter & Instagram: @sonnyangara/PN
