ARMM sends relief team to Pablo-hit areas

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - A 150-member contingent of physicians, nurses and social workers from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao launched Friday a three-day relief mission in the adjoining typhoon-ravaged provinces of Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental.

The relief group, led by ARMM’s acting governor, Mujiv Hataman, and his regional health secretary, Dr. Kadil Sinolinding Jr., left Cotabato City Thursday.

Hataman’s chief of staff, John Magno, said Hataman and Sinolinding also brought with them medicines, such as pain relievers, antibiotics and anti-diarrheal drugs, for distribution to residents dislocated by Typhoon Pablo.

Magno said Sinolinding even brought with them doctors from the Integrated Provincial Health Office in Lanao del Sur and volunteer medical practitioners from different institutions.

“It [is] a typical Filipino `bayanihan’ mission for a community in distress,” Magno said.

Magno said Hataman also enlisted the assistance of trauma alleviation experts from the ARMM’s social welfare department.

Magno said the regional relief contingent brought some five tons of relief supplies procured by different line agencies of ARMM and collected from employees of different agencies and support offices under the Office of the Regional Governor.

Sinolinding, in a text message, said the rank-and-file of the ARMM’s Department of Health have been supporting their relief mission to Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental.

Sinolinding, a foreign-trained eye surgeon, said health offices and different service units of DOH-ARMM in the region even cancelled their planned Christmas parties in deference to their relief works in the two provinces.

"We understand and feel how the miserable situation these displaced people are in. Our relief mission is one way of showing that we in the ARMM care,” Sinolinding said.

Latest data from the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council show that, by Friday, 1,047 people perished in the devastation wrought by Typhoon Pablo.

The typhoon destroyed 168,227 houses, dislocating some 900,000 people. - John Unson