It’s a structure that’s all too familiar to me—as a child and a young mother.

My pediatrician used to hold clinic here back when it was new, when its walls were shiny and bright. Murals adorned its large walls, lifting a sick child’s spirits; play equipment was placed strategically to entertain kids waiting outside the doctor’s offices.

Rich and poor, they came to this sprawling hospital in Quezon City.

Fast forward to almost 20 years. This time, as a young mother, I found myself often in the same hospital. While it was still home to the country’s finest pediatricians and pediatric specialists, by the late 1990s, it had seen much better days.

Perhaps owing to lack of funding, many areas seemed in disarray.

However, to a young mother of a baby born with congenital heart disease, the hospital was a place of solace. Saturday afternoon, once a month for four years, in the heat and in its hallways, we would sit with other parents to seek out quality medical treatment for our children from the country’s best doctors.

The vendor from Balintawak market, the saleslady from SM and the clerk in the government office next door—all of us mothers sought care from the same doctor for our children whose hearts were born special.

Best and brightest

It was, therefore, with great sadness that I read that the Philippine Children’s Medical Center (PCMC) was being evicted by the National Housing Authority (NHA). The PCMC has been providing poor Filipino children subsidized quality medical treatment for decades.

In 2012, more than 70,000 children from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, benefited from its services, and the number continues to grow each year.

The country’s best and brightest pediatric specialists have, at one time or another, held clinic at PCMC. It has been an effective training ground for pediatric specialists—pediatric oncologists, cardiologists and neurologists. It is one of just three Level-4 training hospitals in the country, the others being University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital and University of Santo Tomas Hospital.

Its Pediatric Cancer and Hematology Center is a refuge of sorts for children with cancer and their families who otherwise would not be able to afford the care and treatment.

Every year, about 3,500 children are afflicted with cancer, now the fourth leading cause of child deaths in the country.

As the biggest tertiary child care center under the Department of Health, the PCMC merits priority in financial and other support from the national government. But if its appearance in the last two decades or so is any indication, it does not seem that way.

Heartbreaking

It is heartbreaking to read the news that the NHA is now pressing PCMC for P1.1B as payment for the lot it occupies.

Worse, NHA seems bent on evicting PCMC.

From the original 6.3 hectares the hospital compound used to occupy, the area was reduced to 3.7 hectares when the NHA gave 2.6 hectares to the Office of the Ombudsman and Court of Tax Appeals.

Recently, it sold another portion of the lot to the Philippine Institute of Development Studies or PIDS for P86M.

The recommendation is for the hospital to be relocated to a high-rise building in a 2,500-sq m lot. That would only reduce the number of patients the hospital is able to serve. As one esteemed pediatric cardiologist puts it, “I am a pediatric cardiologist taking care of children at PCMC. This is the biggest and busiest children’s hospital in our country, which should be enhanced and expanded and not reduced.”

True. Every child has the right to quality health care. An online petition to save PCMC states: “Since 1980, the PCMC has been pleading with the National Government to donate that amount and transfer the title of the property to the hospital. It is, after all, a government hospital and not a profit-making institution, with a clear mandate to provide total health care to children, especially those from poor families. The appeal has remained unheard and unheeded by past five presidents.”

Basic right

Interestingly, the government has seen it fit to subsidize the purchase of the sites of the other medical institutions such as the National Kidney and Transplant Institution and the Lung Center—but not the PCMC, which is a hospital for children.

Health care is a basic right that must be made available to all, from womb to tomb.

In kicking out the PCMC, we will deny the next generation that basic right to quality health care. There must be something seriously warped with our priorities if we let this happen.

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