Distributions on Panay Island

I had the great pleasure to do some distributions to three hospitals today and I wanted to just share some pictures and info about the sites because they are doing great work and are truly amazing people and are extraordinarily grateful to Direct Relief for this support. They clearly hadn’t gotten much aid so far and when I told them we’d be supporting them for the longer term, they were overjoyed. Additionally, they are constantly running out of stocks (generally—not just after Yolanda) because hospitals are funded based on their bed capacity but they are always way over capacity and they don’t turn people away.

Barotac Viejo District Hospital had 6 feet of water flow through the hospital and had to evacuate 40 patients into the local gym before the storm hit. All their stocks were ruined. They are a facility licensed (and thus funded) for 10 beds yet regularly have 35-40 inpatients lining the hallways. 90% of their patients are “indigent” and cannot pay.

Sara District Hospital is the referral hospital for the area. It had its outpatient clinic totally destroyed and most of the roof blown off the in-patient ward. They are licensed for 50 beds but generally have 60-80 inpatients. They do 80-90 deliveries per month (including 6 during the typhoon) and 80% of their patients can’t pay. They are still running on generators.

Balasan District Hospital is licensed for 25 beds and today had 69 people admitted. Again, the hallways

are lined with rusty beds and people laying on the ground. They have seen a greatly increased number of pneumonia patients due to the high numbers of people living in tents and camps in the area. Again, because they have so many more patients than they are licensed and funded for, they are constantly running out of stocks and patients are left to buy themselves.

One last interesting thing about all these sites is they all have Bite Treatment Centers for dog, cat, and rat bites. Balasan has had over 100 bite victims in December alone and they give rabies vaccines to all of those people. I've never seen this before but it's clearly quite a problem--and a scary one since there is no cure for rabies if bitten and untreated.