Court allows Ampatuan checkup but private hospital won’t take him

A Quezon City court has allowed ex-governor Zaldy Ampatuan to undergo a medical checkup outside jail but the hospital he was supposed to be brought to has refused to take him because of the security risk.

In a July 15 order, Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of QC Regional Trial Court Branch 221 directed that Ampatuan be brought to St. Luke’s Medical Center (SLMC) in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City, as an outpatient and not as an admitted patient as he had requested.

Quezon City Jail Annex warden Senior Insp. Edgar Camus was supposed to bring Ampatuan to the SLMC.

But in a manifestation he filed on Monday, Ampatuan’s lawyer, Redemberto Villanueva, told the court the hospital had declined to take his client.

Security risks

“Arrangements were made for the [checkup] with the hospital. However, due to the recent exposés (made by Ampatuan), St. Luke’s Global City has refused to accept him as an outpatient due to security risks,” Villanueva said.

He added that SLMC invoked its “right as a private hospital to do so” where “security risks” are involved.

The former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao governor ended up not being examined by a private doctor.

The request for hospitalization came after Chief Insp. Agnes Aglipay of the health service unit of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology in Metro Manila recommended that Ampatuan be treated in a “hospital setting.”

Jail doctors had discovered that Ampatuan “has coronary heart disease and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus that needs immediate evaluation and prompt treatment.”

List of tests

Among the tests that Aglipay said Ampatuan needed to undergo were an ECG, two-dimensional echocardiography, peripheral arterial and venous duplex scan, endothelial function test, 24-hour Holter monitoring, carotid duplex scan, complete blood chemistry including high sensitivity C-reactive protein, and myocardial perfusion imaging.

These tests are not available in the jail clinic.

Ampatuan set off a series of exposés in the past week, ranging from what he knows about the Nov. 23, 2009, Maguindanao massacre being pinned on his family to the election fraud allegedly committed by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and other ranking government officials in the 2004 and 2007 elections.

Ampatuan has also reportedly sought to turn state’s evidence against his relatives in the Maguindanao massacre where 57 people were killed in the worst case of election violence in the country.

He is being held in a separate cell from his fellow accused, who include his own father Andal Sr. and brother Andal Jr. He has not yet been arraigned for his alleged participation in the massacre.