CABANATUAN CITY—President Rodrigo Duterte is fighting a new war—against cancer, that is—as he graced the 20th anniversary celebration of the Premiere Medical Center in Barangay Daang Sarile here.
The Yang clan, led by PMC president Dr. Reynaldo Yang, his wife PMC director Sylvia Banal-Yang, Provincial prosecutor Danilo Yang, Geraldine Yang, and other hospital officials welcomed the President, who said doctors have the highest credibility among Filipino professionals “because they deal with human lives.”
“Even NPAs [New People’s Army rebels] won’t hurt rural doctors. The NPAs have high respect for doctors because these crazy ones also get sick,” Duterte said.
The President then went to the hospital’s Joseph Ray Banal Yang Cancer Institute to meet with some of the patients there. The Yang couple named the center after their youngest son, who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 13 and died three years later.
His family’s harrowing experience with the Big C inspired the founding of the institute on Sept. 23, 2013, Joseph’s birth anniversary.
Danilo Yang said the President promised to help finance the treatment of cancer patients at the PMC, which has been shouldering their expenses.
“We cannot on our own continue to finance the expenses treatment of cancer patients so President Duterte said he would help,” he said.
During his long tenure as mayor of Davao City before becoming President, Duterte visited cancer patients at the Southern Philippines Medical Center and often spent Christmas there, giving gifts to the children confined there.
The PMC is the first hospital in the country that offers laser treatment for cancer. It is also the first center to offer nuclear medicine in Northern Luzon and Central Luzon, and provides free six-month treatment for tuberculosis patients.
Danilo Yang said the hospital has signed an agreement with the Paulino J. Garcia Memorial Research and Medical Center where all cancer patients from that hospital will be brought to the PMC for free treatment.
He said patients will avail of free treatment if they are certified indigents, adding they could accommodate “as many as 30 patients.”
Sylvia Yang said they are pursuing innovations for improved health care systems with the establishment of a urology center and a laser and vision center.
Soon, a heart institute will open at the PMC, so heart patients in the area would no longer have to travel to Manila for angioplasty and heart bypass operations, she said.
“We want the PMC to become the biggest and most progressive hospital in Nueva Ecija, and the premier hospital of choice in Northern Luzon and Central Luzon,” she stressed.
