Physician recounts hard choices, conditions facing health workers

RISKS AT WORK A health worker wearing a protective suit makes her rounds at Mandaluyong City Medical Center on Sunday. Medical workers led by the Philippine College of Physicians have urged the government to revert Metro Manila to lockdown for two weeks to better manage the coronavirus crisis. (Photo by NIÑO JESUS ORBETA / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines — When doctors at the Philippine Heart Center analyze an incoming patient’s condition, they must make the hard decision of whether to admit the patient for treatment or refer the patient to another hospital, especially if he or she is infected with the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

This, according to Dr. Maricar Limpin, is one of the dilemmas confronting health workers as coronavirus cases in the country continue to rise.

“Sometimes, by the time they reach another hospital that can admit them, they are already on the brink of dying. As health-care providers, we do not want to decline their request to be admitted,” Limpin said in an interview on Sunday.

“We do not want to come to that point. It is unbearable and painful for a health care provider to make that kind of decision,” she added.

Full week of work

Limpin, vice president of the Philippine College of Physicians, was among the doctors who called on the government to put Metro Manila back on lockdown for two weeks since they were now fighting “a losing battle.”

She said the younger doctors had been working for a full week straight. The country’s health-care system already lacked manpower even before the pandemic began, and there were doctors going under quarantine or dying of the contagious disease, Limpin said.

The doctors often sought comfort from their coworkers and families who they did not even get to frequently interact with, for fear that, if they had come in contact with the coronavirus, they risked transferring the virus to them.

“During the first few weeks of March, I didn’t go home and see my family. You can just imagine the pain that we have to go through when we do not see them…The battle is very scary for us, but we need to be brave. If we do not fight, then the Filipinos will lose,” she said.

“We are already doing our jobs properly. But you have no idea what is happening to our health-care workers, to our hospitals. You have no idea how tired we are already,” Limpin said.

‘All of us’

Amid the difficult conditions confronting the health workers, Sen. Cynthia Villar drew flak on Saturday for her response to their call for a lockdown, saying: “They should do their job well. The economy cannot be closed because if people don’t die of COVID-19, they will die of hunger.”

But on Sunday, Villar said her comments were directed at the Department of Health and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., and “all of us.”

“We have to work harder and better, but I am not referring in particular to the medical workers — our front-liners. We are referring to all of us, and DOH and PhilHealth in particular,” the senator said.

She added: “There is so much room for improvement in the government’s response to curb the transmission of the disease.”

“I know the sacrifices made by our health front-liners. Their lives are at stake in taking care of our sick countrymen,” the senator said.

—With a report from Julie M. Aurelio