Humiliation of Patient at Cebu Hospital Result of ‘Poor’ Training of Philippine Medical Workers

The Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD), a nongovernment organization composed of nationalist health workers, today said that what happened to the patient at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu, who was humiliated by doctors and medical staff during a rectal operation in January, was “a clear violation of the patient’s right to privacy” and that those who videotaped the procedure and posted it on YouTube “should be made accountable under existing laws.”

In a statement, HEAD secretary-general Geneve E. Rivera said the incident, which has caught worldwide attention, is a “concrete manifestation of what kind of training our health professionals get from a health-science education that is commercialized and market-oriented.”

Ethical standards are waning in the medical profession, she said, because “much focus is given to the ‘mass production’ of health professionals for labor export. Health science students are trained to meet the ‘global’ standards so that they can work abroad instead of how to genuinely care for patients.”

Rivero also said she disagreed with the comment of a hospital administrator that this will badly affect the Medical Tourism Program (MTP) of the government. “A patient’s right was violated. It is disheartening to note that so-called ‘medical tourism’ gets more concern than the violation of a patient’s rights,” Riversa said.

HEAD, she said, is calling for the strengthening of the laws that protect patient’s rights, make the health science education service and people oriented and appropriate to the needs of the Filipino people especially the poor.

In the bizarre incident, doctors at Vicente Sotto operated on a gay man identified only in the press as Danilo or Jan-jan, after he was brought in with a canister of body spray stuck in his rectum. In the video that was taken through a mobile phone, the hospital staff were jeering and laughing during the operation. One of them even took the canister and sprayed its content. (pinoypress.net)