|
12th Annual SAGIP Golf Classic
The Philippine Red Party and Sagip Buhay Medical Foundation
Sagip Buhay Featured in H&L Magazine
Health and Lifestyle Magazine
First Posted 06/04/2009
Source:
http://healthandlifestylemagazine.wordpress.com/2009/06/
Sagip Buhay Medical Foundation Goes Online
The Daily Tribune
First Posted 06/01/2009
The Sagip Buhay Medical Foundation, an organization with the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) Department of Medicine as its beneficiary, launched its Web site www.sagipbuhay.org recently. The foundation provides health care to indigent patients in the PGH medical wards who could otherwise not...
Link to the article
Making Small Miracles Happen
By Rafael Castillo, MD
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:39:00 05/22/2009
MANILA, Philippines – Doctor Rogelio “Rogie” Tanco, medical director of the Philippine Rotary Pacemaker Bank and a board member of Sagipbuhay Medical Foundation, writes a poignant piece why doctors serve. I’m printing excerpts from the article which reflects the insights of a physician who is confronted with the challenge to make the science—he has spent long years to be a specialist of—work to save lives, even those who don’t have the means to procure the expensive therapies that come with the science.
Read More...
Sagip Buhay Golf Classic Invitational 2009
Even P10 can help save a life!
By Rafael Castillo, MD
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:22:00 03/20/2009
WE HARDLY give it a thought. Many of us probably don’t even care to bend and pick up a P10 coin when we see it on the street. It can’t even buy a can of our favorite soda. But P10 can already help save a life at the Philippine General Hospital.
It can buy any of the following: a syringe, needle and vial, enabling blood extraction to be done; a tablet or two of a cheap BP-lowering drug; a week’s worth of aspirin, which can help prevent stroke and heart attack; and a tablet necessary to prevent patients with goiter to progress to thyroid storm, a potentially fatal complication.
Ten pesos pooled together can buy antibiotics for a seriously-ill patient with pneumonia, or provide the medicines to dialyze a uremic patient, or do an emergency procedure for a patient with clogged arteries in the heart.
For the last 14 years, the Sagip-Buhay Medical Foundation has helped thousands of poor patients admitted to the PGH medical charity wards. As its name connotes, the foundation has literally saved lives as it strives to help as many as it could despite its limited resources.
Dr. Geraldine Zamora-Racaza, assistant chief resident at the Department of Medicine of PGH, is now on her final year of residency at the hospital.
“Through the years, I have witnessed numerous occasions where human spirit triumphed over illnesses that cannot be medically cured,” she stated in her letter. “Sadly enough, however, I have seen more cases where financial deprivation overshadows the human spirit to live.”
Patients die
More than 10,000 patients are admitted to the PGH charity wards annually. Around 95 percent of them cannot afford to be sick. “They either earn lower than minimum wage or have no source of income whatsoever,” Geraldine said.
It’s a sad reality that doctors doing their training, or consultants donating their services at PGH have to contend with. Every day, patients die because they cannot afford to buy the needed medicines. “A lot of them don’t make it through their trials,” Geraldine said.
“It’s sad that we lose patients simply because the proper antibiotics could not be given or essential procedures could not be done due to financial reasons,” she added.
Among the most common causes of death are treatable diseases like pneumonia, or preventable complications of diseases such as those of diabetes or high blood pressure.
Geraldine believes that many of these patients can be easily saved and brought back to becoming productive members of society, if only they had some extra money for healthcare.
Admissions
The top two admissions at the internal medicine department of the PGH charity wards are chronic kidney disease (CKD) from all causes including diabetes, gout, drug-induced and hypertension; and diabetic (DM) foot with non-healing wound.
In both kinds of patients, the average expense is around P35,000 per hospital admission (average of five days for CKD; 18 days for DM foot). The department has at least 3,500 admitted poor patients yearly, so at P35,000 per patient, the Department of Medicine alone needs around P123 million annually.
The hospital allots P1,500 for each patient admitted to cover for some medications and laboratory exams. So the total hospital subsidy to the department is only something like a little over P5 million.
There is a big deficit of more than a P100 million annually for some 3,500 poor patients who find the PGH their only hope to get a fairly decent medical treatment so they can be given a fighting chance to recover from whatever ailment(s) they have.
It makes us boil how some people can even plunder many times that amount while thousands die helplessly for lack of funds which the government should provide.
It is beyond us to make other people decent enough to think twice before taking away from the people what is theirs; but it is within us to do our own humble share in alleviating the situation.
If we can just skip a meal at a five-star hotel or forego buying a signature shirt and donate it instead to Sagip Buhay, this small sacrifice will actually go a long way to cure many illnesses and save many lives.
It is touching how some poor patients donate whatever little they have – as little as P10 – to the foundation when they are about to be discharged.
That is probably their last money, but they give it with all earnestness and sincerity so others, in the same predicament they had been, might also benefit. I’m sure many of us have the same generous spirit and would like to help the foundation.
Saving lives
Those who are interested to be a financial partner of the foundation in saving lives may call Doctors Geraldine Zamora-Racaza and Karla Nomorosa at +63917-8114205 and +63917-5364766 or Nilda Lique (+632521-8450 local 2204) or e-mail sagipbuhay@gmail.com.
Golfers may also want to show their support by joining the annual Sagip-Buhay Golf Classic, which has been the major fund raiser for the foundation. Now on its 11th year, the event will be held on April 22 at the recently renovated Villamor Golf Club.
Dr. Agnes Mejia, current chairperson of the PGH Medical Department, is also inviting all doctors who had trained in the department for an alumni homecoming and scientific activity on May 2 at 6 p.m. at the Palacio de Maynila on Roxas Bouolevard. You may also contact said doctors or Dr. Ruter Maralit at 0917-2730924 or e-mail rumed2005@yahoo.com.
Source:
http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view/20090320-195303/Even-P10-can-help-save-a-life
|
