THE Gabriela Women’s Party wants to determine if the Department of Health purposely allowed the 65-year-old buildings of Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital to deteriorate to make them ripe for closure, eviction and eventual phase-out as claimed by critics.
Incoming Gabriela party-list Rep. Arlene Brosas said the budget that the Aquino administration allotted for the purpose could have been enough to resolve the building safety issues over the Fabella Hospital compound in Sta. Cruz, Manila.
“The Fabella Memorial Hospital was given paltry budget assigned in 10 years except for its uncharacteristic spike of P1.3 billion in 2014. There was little fund assigned to the capital outlay, which can be used for the development of the hospital’s facilities,” Brosas said.
“Only 2.9 percent of the total budget or P5.9 million was allocated for capital outlay in 2007, which increased to P10 million in 2010 and P60 million for this year. There were zero capital outlay funds recorded in 2011, 2013, and 2015 under the Aquino administration,” Brosas said.
“Yet in 2014, it became a whopping P840 million. The Alliance of Health Workers noted that the timing coincided with the invitation to bid for the Infrastructure Project for Fabella Hospital by the DOH inside its compound, so the money was intended not for on-site improvements that the health workers and patients wanted, but for the disruptive transfer plans made,” she added.
Brosas said that apart from the congressional investigation on the matter, the congressional deliberations on the 2017 national budget would be an appropriate venue to resolve the current conflict that pits the staff and clients against the eviction efforts by the hospital directors.
“It is very imperative for the government to settle this problem because many poor mothers cannot find affordable alternatives to Fabella after it closes even temporarily, because other government hospitals are not able to accept expectant mothers,” Brosas said.
Gabriela will also include the call for Fabella to be reinstated as “the country’s primary care hospital for mothers and babies” in the Women’s Summit declarations to be submitted to President-elect Rodrigo Duterte in Davao on June 24.
Brosas said the declaration hopes to assure Fabella a permanent stay in its present location and add satellite Fabella-like facilities in other regions as needed.