Aksyon Demokratiko vice presidential candidate Doc Willie Ong said that having an infectious disease hospital could have helped save the lives of many Filipinos, particularly at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ong made the statement during the CNN-sponsored vice-presidential debates held at the University of Santo Tomas Quadricentennial Pavilion in Manila on Saturday where he and six other vice-presidential candidates present were asked what concrete steps will they take for the next pandemic and how do they plan to implement it.
In response, Ong said that aside from an infectious disease hospital, building a Cancer Center of the Philippines (CCP), modern hospitals for every region and improved access to healthcare services will help prevent deaths and will give the country a fighting chance in winning the war against COVID-19.
“I know that our compatriots are having a hard time with the lockdown, they don’t know what to do. It’s simple, we need to build an infectious disease hospital. We will put the COVID patients there. Other patients of ours cannot die at PGH (Philippine General Hospital),” Ong said, in direct response to an earlier statement by Senate President Vicente Sotto III.
“I just hope we build an infectious disease hospital so as not to put COVID patients in PGH because the doctors are complaining that the cancer patients are being displaced, the ones to be operated on, so many of us died in 2021. So, if we can make a separate at least the hospitals will no longer be overburdened because they are contagious, COVID is contagious to non-COVID so we can’t do check-ups, they fill up right away. I think it will help if we build another hospital so that we don’t run out of hospital beds,” Ong explained.
Aside from these, Ong said the national government should buy the newly discovered COVID-19 medicines that can reduce hospitalization and deaths by 88 percent, just like what Manila is doing under Manila Mayor Isko Moreno’s leadership.
“COVID needs good medicine. There is already medicine for COVID, Paxlovid the name will come to Manila (and) ordered by Mayor Isko Moreno, on February 27, it is very good. In America, it is being given. I don’t know why we don’t buy. So we will do Remdesivir, Paxlovid and others,” he said.
Ong stressed that he has what it takes to accomplish the job of the vice president given his vast experience in the field of medicine as he is usually faced with difficult circumstances particularly in dealing with patients.
“I am a doctor, internist and cardiologist. It’s hard to be a cardiologist. ‘When the patient’s heart goes crazy, we have to decide in 10 seconds. ‘It’s stressful but I’m used to that. Here in government, you have a lot of advisers. Can you wait a week before deciding,” Ong said.
Ong previously expressed alarm over the 800,000 recorded deaths in 2021 even as he said that reducing the total number of deaths per year should be a top government priority.
His remarks were in response to a statement made by Commission on Population and Development executive director Dr. Juan A. Perez that the country has hit its highest mortality rate in 63 years as it tallied an estimated 800,000 deaths by the end of 2021.