Cebu Hospital Scandal: Justice for ‘Sottoed’ Man

PinoyPress Blog: When the character of American actress Teri Hatcher muttered on “Desperate Housewives” something that tended to cast aspersion on Filipino doctors and health professionals, Filipinos quickly raised hell. The Filipino medical community in the United States then relentlessly hounded ABC television with complaints, in the hope of repairing the damage the network supposedly did to the reputation of our doctors.

Well, they should now all troop to Cebu City, specifically to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center. Because what this hospital or its surgical staff did to a gay man identified only in the Cebu press as Jan-jan (and in the Manila press as “Danilo”) is far worse than Hatcher’s line and has damaged the reputation of Filipino doctors and health professionals in ways that cannot be immediately undone.

In January, Jan-jan was admitted to the hospital because a canister had ended up in his rectum. During the procedure to remove the canister, the hospital staff not only humiliated Jan-jan with taunts and laughter, but also videotaped him. As you can imagine, the video ended up on YouTube.

The video has since been removed but one can still see traces of it on the Internet, and the wires and numerous online and print publications have written about it. In fact, when you search “filipino doctors” on Google, an item about the scandal is in the Top 5 results. When you search “filipino doctors on Google News, the first item in the search result is about the incident.

As for Vicente Sotto, when you google “vicente sotto cebu,” what appears are not just stuff about the maverick senator or about his jester of a grandson, Tito Sotto (Vicente III), but a whole bunch of other links to the scandal. The man must be turning in his grave. And after this embarrassing incident, the Sottos might consider working for the removal of their patriarch’s name from that hospital.

By the way, Vicente Sotto Memorial refused to reveal the names of the staff that humiliated Jan-jan. After what they did to him, that doesn’t sound right.

Let me launch a contest, then: Whoever can provide PinoyPress the names of all the people involved in this sordid affair will get free one-year web hosting, courtesy of Web Host Philippines. (Email entries to pinoypresss (at) gmail (dot) com. Submissions will, of course, be verified.)

In the meantime, here are the names of some officials of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center — if they don’t do the right thing (that is, identify those assholes, fire them, prosecute them and strip them of whatever professional credentials), I pray that their names be forever associated with this shameful act.

(And if the Sottos don’t remove their name from the hospital, I will declare that the act of sodomizing somebody with a foreign object should be called “sotto,” as in “He sottoed me last night.” Unfair to the Sottos? You bet it is! But try telling that to Jan-jan.)

Anyway, here are some of the hospital’s officials:

* Dr. Gerardo Aquino, hospital chief
* Maricon Esparagoza, administrative officer
* Dr. Joseph Al Alesna, chairman of “special concerns”
* Dr. Celia Mabalatan, chief training officer
* Dr. Marian Denopol , assistant chief training officer
* Amosa Pascual, assistant chief nurse
* Dr. Emmanuel Gines, media liaison officer

Do the right thing, people. Or shame on you.

(CC Hidalgo/PinoyPress.net)