To build, rebuild or share space

The fate of the quake-damaged Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) remains in limbo amid the debate over whether to demolish and build a new one or retrofit the cracked structure.

A third interim option was offered by the Philippine National Red Cross over the weekend. Its chairman Richard Gordon offered to set up a temporary tent hospital.

“Just give us enough space,” he said and the Red Cross would set up what they usually do in calamity areas.

It’s a sound, humanitarian proposal, but the idea and image of Cebu City, Queen City of the South, the once proud “Second to None” city of yore, behaving like a disaster zone when the greatest dislocation of people is across the channel in Bohol province, does not do justice to the city.

Consider a fourth option.

While City Hall officials debate on how to spend a P103 million calamity fund or reach Mayor Michael Rama’s target of P1.5 billion for a dream 1,000-bed hospital, can we ask private hospitals to fill the gap?

Cebu City hosts several modern hospitals with first-rate medical staff and excellent facilities.

The big three – Chong Hua Hospital, Cebu Doctors’ Hospital and Perpetual Succour Hospital – have all invested in the expansion of their buildings and facilities in recent years, eyeing bigger markets beyond Cebu through medical tourism.

What would it take for each private institution to pledge here and now, 10 percent or 20 percent of its beds for CCMC’s displaced patients and future charity cases?

Ten percent is a classic amount for tithing in church. A private hospital with bolder corporate social responsibility (CSR) could offer 20 percent.

To be a true response to the emergency of the Oct. 15 earthquake and the sudden loss of the 300-bed CCMC, the offer should be on top of their current charity wards.

Immediately after the quake, about 130 CCMC patients were evacuated. Some spent a week in tents or the fire department’s lobby across the street before being transferred to private hospitals by special arrangement.

The sight of newborns and infants in their cribs, with exhausted mothers fanning them in the humid chapel converted into a nursery, was heartbreaking.

If a fiscal incentive is needed to get 10 percent or 20 percent extra non-revenue beds, City Hall could offer tax breaks to private hospitals.

Debate and fund-raising take time. Mayor Rama and the City Council, who don’t see eye to eye on many fiscal matters, can take till Christmas and Sinulog to raise a single hollow block.

In the meantime, the weakest and poorest residents of Cebu City have nowhere to go for hospital care that doesn’t require a P5,000 deposit. (The overburdened state-run Vicente Sotto Medical Memorial Center has its limits.)

The need is now. A tent city isn’t good enough – shouldn’t be “OK lang” – for charity patients of a city that strives to be among the best in Asia.