Health workers, nursing students stage protest rally

More than 300 medical health workers and nursing students, along with patients from the state-owned San Lazaro Hospital, staged a protest rally at the hospital’s quadrangle, denouncing an order to classify patients by age instead of by illness.

Remy Maltu, the hospital’s association president, said they are worried about the patients as "some might be contaminated with diseases far worse than their own."

Under the department order, patients are either placed at the adult ward or the pediatrics ward.

Maltu said there is a high possibility that patients who come to the hospital with only one illness will acquire more viruses that can aggravate their condition.

She stressed that most of the patients spend at least one month in the hospital.

"If they acquire new illnesses aside from what they already have, they will spend more money," she explained in a telephone interview.

Maltu also said health workers are now more at risk to viruses particularly those who are assigned in the satellite intensive care unit (ICU).

She said they are asking the management to revert back to the old system of classifying patients according to their illnesses.

However, Dr. Arturo Cabanban, director of the San Lazaro Hospital, insisted that the order classifying patients by age instead of illness in the hospital has improved patient care and decreased mortality rate.

"Those are things that we will discuss with them… we have discussed that (issue) over and over again," Cabanban said.

"They don’t have basis for their complaint," Cabanban said. "We had an infection control committee who evaluates infectious and communicable diseases," he said. "We are open to what they want and for further clarification," Cabanban said. <