‘Perlas’ of great price
DR. Dreyfuss Perlas was a biology graduate of UPLB and a medicine graduate of the West Visayas State University. He obtained a Master in Public Management, major in Health Systems and Development, from the Development Academy of the Philippines.
He was a medical responder in the aftermath of typhoon Pablo and of the Zamboanga City siege. He was an intern at the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute and also served as a medical retainer of the Philippine Army.
Since 2012, he chose the road less traveled and became a doctor to the barrios, serving the good people of Sapad, Lanao del Norte — a fifth-class municipality with around 21,000 people — from October, 2012, until March 1, 2017, when he was killed.
Perlas’ name is now up there, along with Dr. Bobby dela Paz and others like them who defied expectations that they stay in the comfort of cities to get rich like their many rich patients.
The murder of Dr. Perlas is unmistakably sad and shocking, an unforgivable crime to his family and friends. It also meant one less doctor to the indigent patients who saw perhaps for the first time a man of medicine serve them competently and humbly.
There is absolutely no excuse for authorities not to do everything possible and everything they are obliged to do under the law to get to the bottom of the incident and to catch and prosecute the murderers. If the authorities fail to do so, it will be a disincentive for doctors who wish to follow the lead of Perlas and Dela Paz.
The story of Perlas strikes a chord because we know that health services are a precious commodity, and not a right, in our country. Although most of us believe that health services are too important to be left to the private sector, a sad situation remains the status quo.
Doctors like Perlas are exceptional and honored because they represent our aspirations for doctors, medicine, and health services. We want them to be of service to the people.
Our hardworking people deserve to have the honor of being served by the most outstanding nurses, doctors, surgeons, and other allied medical professionals in a system where no one goes bankrupt or deprived of such service only because they are poor. We want a future where public hospitals are modern, adequate, and fully-equipped, and with nurses, doctors, and allied medical personnel receiving commensurate pay worthy of their efforts and role in society.
Public health is a worthy public investment, to keep our people healthy and to take care of those who unfortunately fall prey to disease. Apart from education and housing, health is the other pillar of any modern society.
The availability of big, modern medical centers owned by the private sector does not cut it. These could only serve a fraction of the population and the rising costs of private health care disenfranchise the majority, consign them to bankruptcy, and could spell untimely death due to the absence or shortage of appropriate care.
In most developed countries, health care is already a fundamental right of their people, not out of whim but of necessity. No one gets bankrupt because a family member gets sick. Society, through a practical social insurance, takes care of the citizen.
What we have now is an un-Filipino health system where the government gives either token “prioritization” to health services, limited funding for public hospitals, reduced number of or downsized public hospitals, scaleddown public health services, and the like. At the same time, the government promotes affordable, modern, complete, and world-class medical tourism programs for foreigners who obviously have the means to obtain such services.
For those who may not be accommodated by the shrinking public hospitals, there are the private medical centers where services are most expensive and beyond the means of the ordinary Filipino.
Yes, there’s Philhealth, but that’s not what we obviously need. It is inadequate and a sorry alternative to maintaining a free public health system open to all Filipinos. We have yet to see families exclaim, “Thank God for Philhealth, we won’t go bankrupt because father got sick!” And as most of us know, while Philhealth may claim to be the Philippines’ universal health care program — it is a program marked by scandals involving traditional politicians who use it for patronage politics as in the case of a recently elected senator, and by private hospitals and private doctors to siphon off gargantuan claims.
For the advocates of people with HIV and AIDS and families of those with cancer, and serious conditions like hemophilia, ours is a health system that offers no dose of realistic hope. Instead of research laboratories and public wards, most hospitals only open chapels where the sick could beg God for miraculous healing.
Those who wish to look clever and “educated” by asking “sounds good, but who’ll pay for this?” are not as clever and “educated” as they may claim. The state will pay for it, from our taxes. Surely, a state that would find better uses for P3-trillion in annual appropriations could downsize the unimportant, and upsize the important. If developed and developing countries don’t see anything wrong with such use of taxpayer funds, why should be begrudge ourselves from aspiring for the same.
The alternative is what we have now, where we beg for donations, go line up at the PCSO, pray that Philhealth coverage would be enough for hospitalization costs, ask the saints that the doctors won’t ask for professional fees sometimes amounting to a year’s minimum wage, hope to see an actual doctor if we find ourselves sick in the barrios or if our family is in any of those barrios, see shiny medical centers most of us could barely afford, and not consider public hospitals because we know they are always full.
Perlas was a gem to the people of Sapad and others he served. May he inspire us to fight to transform our public health system towards serving the real gems Perlas saw in Sapad: Our people.