Not Like Redlands : Manila Slum Hospital Jars U.S. Doctor

In all his years as a family physician in Redlands, Calif., Dr. Steve Peterson had never seen anything like Tondo General Hospital.

Until Monday, Peterson had never seen surgery performed in a dingy hallway outside an operating room already full and unable to accommodate even patients who were dying.

He had never seen a hospital so poor that it must wash and recycle surgical gloves and must sometimes delay urgent surgery because there are no gloves.

He had never seen an obstetrics ward so poorly equipped that it had to cannibalize three of its four incubators to keep one working and where the rest of the premature babies are jammed into bassinets warmed only by a floor lamp.

In Manila’s Worst Slum

“I would say that this is certainly a graphic illustration of need,” Peterson said. “And no, I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.”

Tondo General is situated in the heart of Manila’s worst slum. It has 200 beds to serve a population of 800,000 people, many of whom live in squatter colonies, in one-room shanties of cardboard and plywood.

On Monday the hospital was one of the first stops for the 25 members of an American medical delegation sponsored by the Hospital Council of Southern California and the Los Angeles-based Operation California. Together the two have embarked on an unusual, ambitious, privately financed medical-aid project to help heal a nation too poor to heal itself.

The group arrived in Manila on Saturday with 11 tons of medicine, surgical equipment and medical supplies donated by doctors, clinics and hospitals throughout Southern California. The supplies were tailored specifically for the Philippines: tens of thousands of pairs of surgical gloves, two modern incubators and more than 1,000 doses of vaccine for measles, a disease reaching epidemic proportions in this country.

‘Ongoing Flow of Help’

The aid mission is called Project HELP--for Hospital Emergency Lift, Philippines--and its director, David Langness, told a group of community leaders Monday that the mission is not meant to end with the present effort.

“We are being touched not just by the warmth of your country but by the extreme needs you have here,” Langness said at a luncheon sponsored by an association of wives of government officials.

When the delegation completes its scheduled five days of visits to medical facilities here, Langness said, “we will go back to the the United States galvanized and moved by what we have seen, and that, in turn, will generate an ongoing flow of medical supplies and help.”

The idea for the project began after the ouster of President Ferdinand E. Marcos a year ago, according to Richard Walden, executive director of Operation California, which has sponsored similar aid missions to 26 countries.

Only the Beginning

“We waited and waited and waited for the climate in the Philippines to change for the better,” Walden told the women’s group on Monday.

But it was not until President Corazon Aquino’s 10-day trip to the United States last September that the two organizations began soliciting donations from throughout Southern California and organized the mission to the Philippines.

Langness recalled that Aquino, in a Sept. 23 speech to 1,600 business leaders in San Francisco, said that “we’d like you to do whatever you can to help our country.”

“This,” he said, “is the beginning of our response to that call.”

Langness’ group is learning, however, that it is easier to deliver the goods to a country than it is to distribute them to the people. For example, in a meeting Monday morning with Secretary of Health Alfredo Bengzon, the delegation was told that there are delicate cultural reasons why the American doctors should try to refrain from actually treating the sick themselves.

Plea for More Donations

“There is a certain sensitivity on the part of local practitioners,” Bengzon told the group. “If you want to help, help in overall health care. Disseminate information about the Philippines when you return to America. . . . Disseminate investment opportunities.

“With regard to health care, the simplest way would be donations of supplies, not just medicines, surgical and hospital equipment, but hardware and supplies, linen and beds. If you can just raise linen and bed sheets, just for our hospital beds, it would be a big help.”

Yet the Americans doctors could not resist coming into direct contact with patients. On Sunday they stopped briefly at a hospital about 25 miles outside Manila on the way back from lunch at a resort, and they saw dozens of patients waiting patiently for them, apparently organized by the local mayor.

Peterson promptly stepped in and treated eight of them, and others in the group followed his lead, with administrative members of the group running to nearby pharmacies and buying drugs with their own money.

“It would seem on the surface that there is no solution . . . to the problem,” Peterson said later. “But, you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to start somewhere.”