Council adds P5M more for Guba Hospital rehabilitation

CEBU, Philippines - The City Council is earmarking a P5 million budget for the Guba Community Hospital in the mountain barangay of Guba as additional budget for the hospital’s full blown operation.

The requested appropriation shall be included in the next Supplemental Budget, which is pending for submission.

Supplemental Budget No. 2 will amount to about P1 billion, but the council wants to insert P5 million more for the Guba Hospital in addition to the initial P10 million request for various purposes of the Cebu City Medical Center. The P5 million shall cover the cost of hiring additional personnel and additional medical equipment and supplies.

The Cebu City Medical Center, the entity in charge of managing the Guba Hospital, has proposed to add more nurses, more doctors and more medical officers to man the facility. At present, the hospital only has two doctors, four nurses and three midwives.

When it was closed for renovation early this year, the hospital was left to accommodate only out-patients while those who needed special medical attention were brought to CCMC.

Rehabilitation of the hospital was completed last month through funds from the Priority Development Assistance Fund of former Rep. Raul del Mar amounting to P8 million. Another P6 million was donated by the Department of Health in Central Visayas for the purchase of medical equipment and supplies.

The rehabilitation of the Guba hospital has given the facility a new look, but more importantly allows the facility to accommodate more patients, especially those from the mountain barangays in the north district.

The hospital now has a 10-bed capacity with separate wards for male and female, a labor room, outpatient department, an operating room, a pharmacy, a laboratory, an isolation room and a nurse’s station.

Basic laboratory tests and procedures are done at the laboratory room so that residents in the mountain barangays will no longer have to go to the city proper for complete blood count, blood typing, urinalysis, blood sugar count, radiology and x-ray and electrocardiogram.

The city’s sister city in Belgium, the city of Kortrijk has also pledged to donate equipment to the hospital. – THE FREEMAN