The city government of Manila is hastening the construction of a new Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center which is touted to be fully equipped when it opens this summer.
Mayor Joseph Estrada said the massive rehabilitation and upgrade plan of the medical center is made possible with Manila’s improved financial standing and resolution of its debt and bankruptcy woes. He added his administration is determined to bring OMMC back to its stature as the leading public hospital of the country’s capital city.
Estrada said the project is one of the ongoing infrastructure improvements under the city’s comprehensive P500-million Modernization Program for all its hospitals and 59 health centers.
Dra. Regina Bagsic, consultant for Hospital Services and Administration, said when Estrada assumed office in June 2013, the hospital was in a dismal state and its accreditation as a Level 3 hospital was “hanging by a thread.”
She added the lack of equipment as well as support to personnel proficiency perpetrated by decades of mismanagement. “There is only one X-Ray machine that is about to conk out. In fact the training program in radiology which they used to have has been abolished.”
OMMC director Edwin Perez said the project which started sometime in 2014 is expected to be completed by second quarter of 2016, when the hospital will turn 47.
The five-story hospital located in Malate, Manila is a 300-bed, general and training medical center and the only one with a Level 3 certification out of the city’s six public hospitals.
Its construction was endorsed by former Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson to provide the healthcare needs of the indigent Manileños, but was inaugurated during the term of Mayor Antonio Villegas in 1969.
Perez said so far, the renovation is nearing its completion with the Emergency Room, Intensive Care Unit, Out-Patient Department, lobby and administration offices all ready.
The city government is hoping to make the OMMC as a go-to hospital of the five other public hospitals, which is fully-equipped and capable of providing services, still free of charge.
Bagsic said the new OMMC will have a complete Radiology and Imaging Section with a fully-functioning digital X-Ray machine, ultrasound, fluoroscopy, a 32-slice CT scan, and an MRI, all of which are set to be installed as soon as their respective housing facility is built.
“We’ll also have a complete clinical laboratory section with hematology, immunology, microbiology. We’ll have a complete anatomical pathology section. Then, we are shaping up for a blood bank. The blood bank I think is one of the important things we need to provide being a Level 3 hospital [such that] we [can] service the rest of our five other hospitals,” she said.
The other public hospitals in Manila are Ospital ng Sampaloc, Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center, Ospital ng Tondo, Sta. Ana Hospital, and Justice Jose Abad Santos General Hospital.
“Hopefully we will be granted not only Blood Bank status but Blood Center status. In this way, the 6 hospitals of the city will be fully independent and we can supply each other. We have a need for a lot of blood, since we have our Dialysis Center, the biggest in the country,” Bagsic said.