Time for name change: ‘Diosdedo Macapatay Tao’ hospital

MANILA, Philippines—A public hospital in Caloocan has been given a new name after enraged city residents started dubbing it the Diosdedo Macapatay-Tao Memorial Medical Center, for its reportedly dismal services and inadequate health facilities.

In a statement, Caloocan Mayor Oscar Malapitan said that the “President Diosdado Macapagal Memorial Medical Center (PDMMMC) is now called Caloocan City Medical Center. The name change has been approved and signed by the Sangguniang Panlungsod.”

The change came in the wake of “ridicule and mockery” from city residents who complained about the hospital’s “dismal failure … to provide immediate and adequate health facilities and services … that unfortunately resulted [in the patient’s] death,” read the ordinance on the name change filed by Caloocan first district councilor Aurora Henson II.

“In order to erase the dismal impression that [the city’s flagship hospital] ‘kills rather than cures,’ there is a cogent reason to rename the Diosdado Macapagal Memorial Medical Center,” the ordinance added.

This is the third time that the hospital is changing names.

Originally named Ospital ng Caloocan, then Mayor Rey Malonzo ordered the hospital’s name to be changed to PDMMMC in 2004, in deference to Macapagal’s daughter, Gloria Arroyo, who was President at that time.

Along with the change in the hospital’s name, the city government said it was committed to raise the level of service in the medical facility.

Malapitan said the city government has signed a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Health to modernize the hospital’s facilities under the agency’s Center of Excellence on Private-Public Partnerships in Health.

The city mayor earlier pledged investments in more health equipment and facilities for the hospital, including advanced X-ray machines and a computed tomography (CT) scan machine, as well as an eye center with an outpatient clinic.