PGH temporarily suspends surgical procedures after fire hits hospital

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine General Hospital (PGH) has temporarily suspended surgical procedures following a fire that broke out at the facility on Sunday, its spokesperson said Monday.

PGH spokesperson Dr. Jonas Del Rosario said that the fire started in the area where surgical instruments were being sterilized.

“The effect really, the impact is this sterilization area, this is where we disinfect all the equipment we use for surgery. So right now we have suspended all the surgical procedures in PGH,” he told ABS-CBN News Channel.

“This is a major problem because as you know we offer a lot of surgical procedures. A lot of these procedures are very specialized and only PGH can offer them,” he added.

Del Rosario noted that the PGH is also one of the few hospitals that perform operations on COVID-19 patients.

“If they need to be operated, then PGH will have to do it,” he said. “We are just praying that not a lot of the instruments were destroyed and we can resume operations within the next 24 to 48 hours.”

Some of the patients, according to Del Rosario, were evacuated to the emergency room.

“We suspended the emergency room (ER) muna (for now). That’s where we evacuated our patients temporarily. We have a new emergency room. It has not been used but we opened it yesterday for everyone because that is one way of segregating patients,” he said.

“We also asked permission to stop our admissions (at ER) just for today and hopefully by tomorrow we will reopen the emergency room,” he added.

Twelve babies were transferred from the PGH to other hospitals following the fire, said Del Rosario. He said 10 were transferred to the Sta. Ana Hospital while two were brought to the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital, also located in Manila.

“We were told that by today, the neonatal ICU (intensive care unit) will reopen so maybe we don’t really have to transfer some more babies to other hospitals,” he said.

Del Rosario said authorities from the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Bureau of Fire Protection will go to the PGH this Monday to check the site of the fire. He hopes that a full report on the fire incident will be released this Monday.

JE