Kusug Tausug lawmaker wants more hospitals
Kusug Tausug party-list Rep. Shernee Tambut, who survived the deadly Covid-19 respiratory disease, vowed to file bills increasing the number of primary and secondary hospitals throughout the country, making sure that several of these new hospitals will be built in island-towns where health care services are scarce.
Tambut reflected on her ordeal following weeks of isolation after being tested positive for the disease in the middle of January.
While recuperating in her room in Manila, Tambut said she was without any human contact, except for her mobile phone which allowed her to connect to her doctors, caregiver and members of her immediate family.
Remembering what she went through, Tambut said: “Mamang (Nurunisah Tan) cried and wanted to come to Manila so she can take care of me when she found out that I have Covid. I told her not to come because she might get infected and she’s a senior citizen. Papang (Sulu Gov. Sakur Tan) is also very worried, especially because (my husband) John (who is an international pilot) is not around to take care of me (he has a flight in Los Angeles).”
Still recalling her sick days, Tambut said she checked the number of hospitals in the country online and “Google says as of 2019, there were around 1800 hospitals in the Philippines and 721 of these are public hospitals.”
Citing data from 2020, Tambut said the Department of Health (DoH) operates 66 of these hospitals that have a total bed capacity of 27,019. These DoH hospitals are distributed as 38 in Luzon, 14 of which are in the National Capital Region; 12 in the Visayas and 16 in Mindanao. Most of these hospitals, she said, are in the urban centers, which are densely populated.
She noted that a majority of the island-towns in the Visayas and Mindanao have little access to basic health services and “no access to specialized health services, except when the sick are brought to the provincial capital. To worsen matters, transport from these small island-towns to the provincial center is rare and often expensive.”
“My mind goes back to Sulu with over 100 islands, where eight of its 19 municipalities are island-towns far from the provincial center of Jolo. How would it be for anyone living in any of these eight towns to have symptoms of Covid-19? Transport to Jolo takes several hours by speedboat or motorized boat, and from Jolo, if the patient shows severe symptoms, he must be rushed to Zamboanga City for specialized treatment. That is for the patient with some money. The poor could barely afford transport to Jolo,” Tambut further said.
Although Kusug Tausug is active in providing food and financial assistance to poor people and marginalized sectors in the country, Tambut said: “If Allah’s mercy will grant me another chance to be in Congress, I will file bills increasing the number of primary and secondary hospitals throughout the country, making sure that several of these new hospitals will be built in island-towns. In Shaa Allah.”
Tambut, who is seeking reelection, is the chairperson of the Globalization and World Trade Organization (WTO) Committee in the House of Representatives, whose jurisdiction includes all matters directly, and principally relating to the effects on various social sectors of WTO policies and other actions to harness opportunities offered by globalization for economic development. She is also the vice-chairperson of the Committee on Poverty Alleviation, and a majority member of the committees on Economic Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Muslim Affairs, Trade and Industry, Transportation, and Women and Gender Equality.