Branching out

Barring few hitches, the plan adopting a program similar to the Malasakit Center, a one-stop assistance shop now stationed at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center for Cebuano indigent patients, will be implemented in other areas outside Cebu.

The initial steps will be the establishment of a Malasakit Center at the Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center in Tacloban City. Special Assistant to the President Christopher "Bong" Go said a similar center will soon be put up in Bacolod City and Iloilo City.

It's good that the center, being piloted in Cebu early this year, will soon be duplicated in other areas in the region. Hopefully, it will branch out further to other places in the country to serve more indigent Filipinos.

Since its establishment in Cebu, its organizers claimed that the program has been successful. In fact, it has already assisted up to 13,000 patients at VSMMC through the P50 million that the government earlier allocated to the program.

The good thing about the Malasakit Center is that it does not only cater to Cebuanos. Many indigent patients from other areas in the Visayas and Mindanao admitted at VSMMC have also benefitted from it.

To serve more poor patients, a nationwide operation of the program would not only benefit those in the far-flung areas. It would make the center a flagship health assistance program of the Duterte administration as well.

Of course, Cebuanos are proud of the fact that what started as an ordinary help desk for local poor patients at the VSMMC is now starting to grow into a major government health assistance initiative to be established in other areas.

Cebuanos are beginning to lose monopoly over the program. But that is good news because the more areas the Malasakit Center covers, the more people from poor communities around the country can benefit from it.