Bangsamoro gov’t pours in P14M into Cotabato hospital for COVID-19 fight

COTABATO CITY–The Bangsamoro autonomous government has injected P14 million into the Cotabato Regional and Medical Center (CMRC) to boost its capacity to do battle with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim said the amount would be used to procure medical and laboratory supplies to carry out tests for coronavirus.

Ebrahim signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with CRMC chief of hospital Dr. Helen Yambao on April 13 to use the fund for hospital supplies and reagents, improvement and renovation of the CRMC lab, pay for salaries of contractual lab workers and training of personnel and other operating expenses.

The funding, Ebrahim said, will bring the hospital “one step closer to being an accredited and capable laboratory” in conducting Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests for COVID-19 patients.

He said among all hospitals in the region, CRMC would be among those that could meet technical requirements for PCR labs.

“We are in difficult times,” Ebrahim said. “We are dealing with an enemy that we cannot see with our naked eyes, an enemy that has overwhelmed health care systems worldwide,” he said.

“Through our cooperation, understanding and strong faith in Allah, we are confident that we will surpass this challenge,” Ebrahim said.

Dr. Leopoldo Vega, chief of Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC), urged the government to improve testing capabilities of government hospitals in Mindanao.

Vega said this would prepare Mindanao hospitals in dealing with another pandemic in the future.

“It’s important because I guess, pandemic always occurs and re-emerging and emerging infections are going to be here,” Vega said.

“I think we need to safeguard ourselves and make sure to capacitate all of the hospitals, especially government hospitals, and to encourage even private hospitals, to develop their own molecular lab and come up with their own trained personnel in terms of doing the PCR testing and viral molecular studies,” he added.

Once most government hospitals have developed testing capability, it would be easier for the government and medical authorities to deal with another pandemic in the future, he said.

“We will be able to defend ourselves in terms of testing and isolating the people, if we improve our testing capabilities here in Mindanao,” Vega said.

“We need to capacitate and improve on our testing laboratories, particularly our molecular biology lab because this is very important when we deal with emerging and reemerging infection like what’s happening right now,” he said.

SPMC, which has been in the forefront of COVID-19 testing in Mindanao, had started building up its capability on molecular biology and PCR and rtPCR testing since the 2009 H1N1 bird flu pandemic, Vega said.

Edited by TSB