MPOC Scheme, Transforms Health Care Services for Profit

Press Statement
January 25, 2013

References:

Mr.  Jossel I. Ebesate, President Alliance of Health Workers: Mobile Number: 09189276381

Mr. Sean Velchez, President NOHWU-AHW, Mobile Number: 09067360468

The pre-bidding for the Modernization of the Philippine Orthopedic Center (MPOC) by the Aquino government this January 25 will mark the transformation of the country’s health care delivery from a citizen’s right to health to a privilege affordable only to a moneyed few. The sale of Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC) is the test case of the privatization of health care delivery in the country.

The MOPC project will cost Php 5.69 B for the 700-bed capacity super-specialty tertiary orthopedic hospital to be built near the National Kidney and Transplant Institute in Quezon City. Of the amount, Php 5.43 B will come from the private investor/s through public bidding. 

DOH Secretary Ona has repeatedly denied that privatization is the very essence of Pnoy’s Public-Private Partnership Program that is gobbling up even the services to the most basic right of the Filipino people. However, the items for MPOC bidding clearly suggest what is expected of the program:

1. Planning, designing and construction of a minimum of 700-bed capacity super-specialty tertiary hospital providing orthopedic clinical services and allied services;
2. Procurement, installation, management, operations and maintenance of modern diagnostic and clinical equipment;
3. Procurement, installation, management, operations and maintenance of IT facilities;
4. Operation and maintenance of the entire facility including diagnostic center, out-patient departments, in-patient departments, and all other activities related to the operations of the hospital;
5. Provision of appropriate administrative and ancillary services (clinical laboratory, imaging and radiology, sterile supplies, pharmacy) of the advanced level that is commensurate with the specific clinical specialties practiced in tertiary care;
6. Provision of teaching and training facilities for basic and advanced clinical care and management of specialized and sub-specialized forms of treatment, highly specialized surgical procedure and intensive care as well as care on the specific prevalent diseases in the locality pertaining to the specialty offered by the hospital. This includes continuance of the existing residency training programs which includes among others the Orthopedic Surgery Residency Training Program as accredited by the Philippine Board of Orthopedics which is currently being provided by the existing Philippine Orthopedic Center; and
7. Provision of appropriate qualified staff.

With the huge amount involved in the project vis-à-vis the complex structures and activities of the modern hospital, the poor patients will not have a chance of enjoying the services they have now at POC. This is how privatized health institution will exclude the poor as priority patients. Even the POC staffs are not assured of their security of tenure.

The sale of POC will become the milestone of health care privatization. Clearly, this is the government’s abandonment of its responsibility to people’s right to health in favor of the impositions of the World Bank, IMF and other International financial institutions on the heavily indebted countries like the Philippines. Privatization of POC and eventually the health care system of the country will further marginalize the poor in the health care delivery. More hospitals like the RITM, San Lazaro Hospital are up for PPP. The 26 public hospitals nationwide are for corporatization, another form of privatization.

DOH’s assures the public that Philhealth is the solution to the health problems of the poor. However, experiences among the ordinary people in the different parts of the country prove otherwise. Philhealth is an insurance, thus business. It should be just an option not a replacement for the government’s responsibility to people’s right to health. A right such as the right to health should not be made a commodity for profit for big local and foreign capitalists, in fact the constitution mandated the government to provide for a quality and affordable health services to all the people. With the impending privatization through PPP of the Philippine Orthopedic Center and transferring the construction of a new modernized orthopedic and trauma hospital, operation, maintenance and the provision of qualified staff to the private sector for the next 25 years, the government, not only reneged on such mandate, it practically turn its back to the very people that it is supposed to be serve.

The affected public health workers, and the ordinary people therefore that will be directly affected by such abandonment of government responsibility have the right to fight back and defend for their right, our right to health. We call on the people to be with us in our collective assertion for our right to health. ###