There has been much controversy generated by
a single tweet, one by broadcast journo Maki Pulido and her perception
of the lack of compassion among health service providers at the Philippine
General Hospital (PGH).
We’ve long known that social media easily
gets the nerves of people. The problem is in a 21st century world
devoid of wit and almost all of satire, these little microblog phrases do more
than surgery. They do vivisection and expose the illness and its pathology if
we may, and in the process killing the patient. In a more literate age, another
physician did a similar thing. Dr Jose Rizal did not pen a tweet, but what made
for tweets or blogs in 19th century Spanish Philippines are novels
and essays. They killed Doctor Rizal who was essentially a messenger. But
unlike Ms Pulido the journo, Dr Rizal had what we now call post-residency
training. He was part of the medical fraternity. I never heard of an account
that a physician went ballistic over Dr Rizal’s diagnosis. Perhaps it was
professional courtesy.
Dr Rizal likens the disease as a cancer, then
as much as is now, an incurable disease. He made the only prescription possible
given the state of medical science at the time.
Dr Rizal wrote on his prescription pad
“I will do with you as the ancients did with
their afflicted: expose them on the steps of the Temple so that each passer by
would invoke the Divine and propose a cure”
And so the illness stinks and stinks like a
diabetic foot or a carcinoma in which the flesh had started to suppurate.
My work rarely brings me to PGH and in the
few times I went there (aside from a medical procedure), it was to give talks
about rapid environment changes to physicians. Since some of the doctors were
once my students in undergrad courses, they welcomed me and showed me around.
Since I am a scientist, I have this insatiable curiosity to learn about the
conditions of the hospital. And noting an unpleasant smell, I asked what was that.
The resident doc told me it was what they call “diabetic foot”. And so that was
my nose-opener. It was not that new. I am no stranger to bad smells. In one
post assessment of a disaster, I have known the scent of decomposing human
bodies.
I did not extend my visit beyond what was
required since the doctors had to attend to their duties. But it was not long
enough to comment if the doctors were compassionate enough. But it was long
enough to comment about the facilities of PGH and the great lengths the
physicians go to provide basic medical care to indigents.
And here is where that issue of compassion
goes. The crux of the matter is that compassion to a health provider is
different to the compassion, or what is thought to be compassion by the lay observer
or by the patient. Western medicine is built upon objectivity in diagnosis and
in treatment protocols and in assessing the health outcomes. Here is where
compassion of the doctor must be seen. When one of these is awry especially the
last, doctors get troubled and in the last they may raise their hands in frustration.
Like Doctor Rizal and why?
My curiosity to know more about it made me
pick up a copy of Dr Ting Tiongco’s memoirs of PGH life in “Surgeons do not
Cry”. If one wants to know the context of compassion in PGH, I would suggest
he/she reads Dr Tiongco’s book.
With this, I do not blame the physician for
reacting the way she did and whose nerve got nicked by Pulido’s tweet. In
frustrated words; she essentially made Rizal’s diagnosis. The question is what
the cure should be? Should mere “exposition of the Temple’s steps” be enough?
I am of the opinion that Ms Pulido was just as frustrated enough as the doctor was. Analogous to a doctor’s job, a journalist
has certain diagnostic jobs to report what is there, the feel good stories and
the stories of corruption that make listeners and readers rise in anger.
And so the doctor and journo did Rizal’s job
and exposed the afflicted on the Temple steps. However what kind of cure can
netizens propose aside from likes and memes?!?
For starters, the whole Philippines is a PGH,
if you keep your eyes, nose and ears open. I am an environmental scientist and
has been to this PGH of islands and likewise like the physician, I raise my
hands in frustration when I learned that the reason why there were decomposing
bodies is because when they were alive, they had no choice but to live in that
hazard prone area. Why?
I rage when social media hypes of Laboracay at
the beach when at the same time I am on a remote island beach better than
Boracay, to assess an environmental problem related to some capitalist environmentally
damaging investment, but the welcoming party are smiling but tubercular and
obviously protein malnourished kids. Why should they be tubercular in an age of
Facebook? My grandmother finished her nursing degree at PGH during the American
colonial period and she treated tubercular children in the same hospital. I
remember her calling this condition with its ancient Greek name “pthisis”. She
caught it at the hospital and she had it until her death. And yet children are
dying of the same disease when people complain of slow Internet speed. When I
joke of the Laboracay camp when the revolution is triumphant, it’s not just
tongue in cheek!
I can give an endless number of examples. But
one that makes me extremely ballistic is this. I rage at the middle classes who
suggest that poor people deserve the kind of services they get (including PGH)
since they don’t pay taxes. And they do pay taxes at every cup noodles they buy
while their children fall victim to infectious diseases the rich and middle
class need not worry about. And the children should not be subsisting on sodium
rich cup noodles for in the future they would need dialysis machines.
And so what’s the cure for the disease? Where
is justice? Perhaps only when the government criminals have no choice but to
seek hospital arrest in PGH! Whether that be from hypertension, some gynecological
condition or mere hysteria. Taking from Dr Rizal, Dr Ting Tiongco gives what I believe is the right prescription
“Drag them screaming to the people’s court to
account for the injustices”
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