Moro doctor treats 16 patients' eyes for free

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The medical team of a physician in the Bangsamoro parliament extended their assistance by performing cost-free cataract and pterygium surgeries for 16 poor patients this week, radio reports on Saturday said.

The 16 patients, mostly ethnic Maguindanaons, are from Bangsamoro barangays in Carmen town in Cotabato province.

The ophthalmologist Kadil Sinolinding Jr., most known as the “doctor sa parliamento ng Bangsamoro,” has continuing charitable programs for Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous people since he was a municipal health officer in the adjoining Montawal and Pagalungan towns in Maguindanao del Sur.

Radio reports on Saturday in Cotabato province and in this city mentioned of his team’s outreach missions in the past seven days that benefitted 16 senior citizens with cataract and pterygium from the Bangsamoro barangays in Cotabato province.

The patients were treated at the Deseret SurgiMed Hospital in Barangay Kayaga in Kabacan, Cotabato.

Volunteers from the Deseret Ambulatory Referral Foundation Incorporated in Kabacan town, the outreach team of Sinolinding’s office and barangay officials cooperated in providing free eye surgery to the 16 patients.

Sinolinding was appointed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as member of the 80-seat parliament in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in August 2022 and has since treated 2,983 eye patients free as a special program of his office.

His medical team had checked the eyes of more than 70 patients and gave them free eye glasses during a charitable mission in Parang, Maguindanao del Norte Thursday.