Paraplegic Venerando Acabal wriggles on a rust-eaten bed to soothe painful bed sores, in misery but also fearful that privatization plans for the Philippines’ only bone hospital will rob him of his refuge.
The state-run Philippine Orthopedic Center, a cramped and dizzying maze of rickety stretchers that spill out of humid wards into dingy hallways, has treated tens of thousands of patients for free since it opened in 1945.
But it is slated to close after a private firm last year won a contract to replace it with an expanded new facility, part of a multi-billion-dollar privatization program.
“If they kick me out of here, I have no choice but to go home and die in my house,’’ said 55-year-old carpenter Acabal, who has been bedridden at the hospital since breaking his back in a construction site accident four years ago.
Despite wretched appearances, the hospital is much-loved by the poor as they can turn up, have complicated operations and stay for years even if they do not have any money.
Of the nearly 7,000 patients treated last year, only two percent paid their bills in full, according to hospital records, and the facility’s chief is worried the charity will be severely curbed under private management.
“It’s difficult to reconcile profitability and service to the poor,’’ hospital director Jose Brittanio Pujalte told AFP.
“Our patients here are the poorest of the poor and they have nowhere else to go.
MANILA BULLETIN
