Physicians celebrate Cebu Medical Week

The Cebu Medical Society is celebrating the Cebu Medical Week from September 21 to 27 wherein CMS members and organization partners will participate in seminars and fora that highlight prevailing issues in health and medicine.

The advocacy this year is focused on raising awareness on common ailments like cardiovascular diseases. Among the discussants in the seminars include those from the Philippine College of Physicians, Pediatric Diseases and Cancer.

CMS Vice President Marian Denopol said the past three to five years have shown a decline in the number of doctors that shifted to nursing, as opportunities for doctors increased in the country. 

What is alarming, however, Denopol said, is the rising number of doctors that go abroad.

Meanwhile, CMS president Nilepta Lim reiterated that the CMS cannot then and there investigate a complaint against doctors in the absence of an official written complaint, such as the issue involving two doctors from the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center who figured in the controversial recording of a surgery wherein a metal canister was removed from the anus of a gay patient. 

And while the CMS has the police power to suspend and expel doctors proven to have violated ethical rules imposed by the organization, the CMS ethics committee must first find the doctors guilty of the complaint.

Doctors who will be denied of membership to the CMS will lose all benefits given to all members like free legal assistance, medical assistance, education and insurance.

Doctors who are not member of the CMS could not be members of the Philippine health Association.

Lim said all 300,000 members of the CMS hold a copy of the Code of Ethics of the PMA to remind them of their responsibilities to their profession and to the community. Of this number, however, only 300 are reportedly active in the CMS. — Jessica Ann Pareja/JMO