Temporary city hospital eyed as mental facility

Once the new 10-story Cebu City Medical Center is fully operational, the city government is planning to convert the temporary city hospital at the Bureau of Fire Protection building into a Neurobehavioral Science Institute.

Councilor Mary Ann de los Santos, deputy mayor for health matters, said the institute would be the first in the country.

“It aims to bring mental health in the realm of medical practice to provide an acute care stabilization unit, out-patient diagnostic, an opportunity to collaborate, treatment, and education with research,” she said in a privilege speech during the October 24 regular session.

The institute, De los Santos said, will complement the barangay health units.

She said the increase of shattering incidents like the mentally-ill man who beheaded his common-law wife in Consolacion town in Cebu, and a senior high school student who jumped off the seventh floor of a college building in Barangay Kalubihan in Cebu City, among others prompted her to push for the establishment of a mental health facility.

Dominic Pahugot, 27, beheaded his live-in partner, Lovely Jane Quiño, 25. Pahugot, who was allegedly under the influence of illegal drugs and was suffering from mental illness, was eventually gunned down by responding policemen.

Pahugot was reportedly a patient of Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center but he was not confined because of lack of space.

According to De los Santos, Dr. Rene Obra, an expert of mental diseases and chief of VSMMC Behavioral Sciences, wants to treat severe mental health patients but they cannot be accommodated at the facility for a long period of time due to space constraints.

VSMMC’s facility is designed for 60 patients only but it is currently housing over a hundred.

De los Santos said there is a “strong evidence of an epidemic of a long neglected medical condition known as the mental illness.”

She said the ignorance of mental health and mental illness has contributed to the social dilemma as the government lacks sensitivity in addressing them like constructing treatment facilities.

She said Senator Risa Hontiveros has already submitted a proposed bill to the Senate, mandating all the local government units to address the mental health problems in their respective jurisdiction.

In Cebu City, de los Santos authored the approved City Ordinance No. 2479, which creates the Barangay Behavioral Health Units (BBHUs) in every village.

She said the ordinance has to be enforced strictly to increase public awareness on mental health.

She said Mayor Tomas Osmeña already agreed, in principle, of her proposal.

In a separate interview, CCMC Hospital Administrator Kenneth Siasar said the first phase of the new CCMC is now 80 percent complete.

The first phase includes the first six floors, including the basement, of the 10-story building.

The six floors are expected to be operational late this year or early next year, Siasar said.

The old CCMC building was declared unfit for occupancy after the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that hit Cebu and Bohol last October 15, 2013. The hospital is temporarily operating at the BFP compound right across the new building.