By Carla P. Gomez
Inquirer Visayas
A visiting Canadian doctor is in awe at the dedication and selflessness of the medical staff at the Guihulngan District Hospital who, even as the walls and floors were rent and parts of the ceiling were falling, doggedly went on working during Monday’s devastating earthquake in Negros Oriental.
“The nurses were doing a fantastic job organizing casualties. We worked through the night as the injured and even the dead were rushed in,” said Dr. Hugh Parsons, an ophthalmologist.
“I was aware of the Filipino people’s resiliency, but what I saw there drove it home for me,” said the Canadian ophthalmologist.
He cited the case of a nurse, whose name he failed to take down, who was taking care of the injured even while she worried about the fate of her father who lived in Barangay (village) Planas, which was badly hit by the 6.9-magnitude temblor.
Parsons, a retina specialist who is married to Filipino physician Tina Aquino, has been conducting medical missions in China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. He was on his way to La Libertad town at the head of a 15-member team of doctors, nurses and medical staff when the tremor struck.
When the team could not get through the roads to La Libertad, it was decided to proceed to Guilhulngan.
Hospital scene
Parsons said he had never seen anything approaching the scale of what he saw in the city.
“Everybody was dazed. Quite a lot of people moved out of their homes for fear of a tsunami. A lot of places were empty. Churches, buildings and houses had collapsed,” Parsons said.
At the Guihulngan District Hospital, the staff tried to deal with so many persons with fractures, cuts and abrasions from falling debris. The patients had been moved out to a portion of the lawn protected by tarpaulin as the hospital was already considered unsafe, Parsons said.
The dedicated nurse, he said, did not abandon her post even as she kept trying to call her father in Planas. But the phone lines were down. When a connection was finally made at about 2 a.m. the next day, she could not reach her father.
Among those who died in the quake were four high school classmates of the nurse’s daughter, Parsons said. He said he did not know if the nurse finally had reach her father.
Because the hospital was lacking in facilities, the medical staff could only stabilize the critically ill patients until the ambulances were finally able to pass through the road between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Parsons said.
Guihulngan could only be reached from the north since the roads and bridges in the south had been destroyed.
“We could only put splints on those with fractures. There were no supplies to set fractures nor anesthesia,” Parsons recalled. He said he sutured a lot of wounds.
They tried to send home people who were stable as quickly as possible to make space for more quake victims coming in, he said.
Hands full
Parsons said he could not say how many patients were brought to the hospital because the medical staff had their hands full with people coming in and out.
In between treating the patients, the doctors and nurses would rest on a cemented area inside the hospital, but aftershocks prompted them to run outside and stay there.
Parsons said he was informed that the hospital in La Libertad had also sustained damage.
“I don’t know where they will treat patients in serious condition,” Parsons said.
“They have no capability to sterilize hospital equipment. They are running out of medical supplies, local anesthetics, sutures, syringes and needles,” he said.
Yes-we-can attitude
Parsons said he was amazed at how people were ready to work and to help others, were polite and even managed to smile despite what they went through.
“Somebody brought us as far as he could never expecting anything for it, and the police and Army helped us move our supplies,” he said.
“The people there all seemed to have this ‘yes, we can’ attitude, and the spirit of wanting to help in whatever way they could,” said Parsons.
