Wednesday, February 11, 2004

This is just too heartbreaking for comfort. From Jojo Robles' column in the Manila Standard....

On Sept. 4, 2002, Dr. James Philip Cruz, a young pediatrician working as chief resident at the Philippine General Hospital’s pedia ward, sat down at his desk, prayed and began writing an e-mail.



Cruz had just completed another long, tiring day at work attending to the poor children who were literally dropping off like flies before the eyes of the hospital staff. There was no epidemic or anything like that. It was just a “normal” day at the government-run PGH, the chronically cash-strapped, undermanned and overburdened hospital along Taft Avenue



The doctor was inspired to write that day because he had witnessed yet another poor, malnourished, sick child die for lack of the most basic of antibiotics, because the parents could not afford the drugs. He was going to send the letter to four of his friends, whom he felt had the resources to spare for the children dying daily under the hospital staff’s care.



Philip’s heartfelt, plain-spoken appeal for anyone to come to the aid of the sick children at PGH was like the proverbial shot heard around the world. Everyone who had an e-mail address, it seemed, had received a copy of the poignant letter. Well-meaning people, business enterprises large and small and fund-raising organizations from all over began calling Philip’s personal cellular phone and the offices of the Give-A-Life Foundation, a private group that had adopted the PGH pedia ward as its beneficiary.



It was a fund-raiser like nothing anyone had ever seen hereabouts. Eventually, Philip’s letter would bring an estimated P30 million in donations to the pediatric ward of the government hospital — and much-needed aid, comfort and new leases on life to the thousands of impoverished children who rely solely on PGH for free medical care.



As for the young doctor who started it all, he would become a minor celebrity, on a first-name basis with big-shot businessmen, show-business persona-lities and media practitioners. All of them wanted to see for themselves how bad things were at the hospital. And all of them coming away convinced that something should be done.



And the cycle of helping the poor children of PGH would start all over again.



It would have been a storybook ending to a young man’s quest to do a bit more than what was expected of him, had it ended there. But it didn’t, and thereby hangs another, infinitely more tragic tale.



Today, Dr. James Philip Cruz is in career limbo. Despite his having completed his four-year residency more than a year ago, he cannot practice medicine as a full-pledged pediatrician.



The reason is simple: PGH, the hospital of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, will not give him a clearance certifying that he has completed his residency training....

Continue on if you want to hear this sad, sad tale.



[via elephant still missing]


[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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