by Yvonne T. Chua
WHEN BARRIO doctor Richard Lariosa arrived in Tagapul-an, Samar in 2002, he was surprised to learn that medicines for the town were being kept at the mayor’s office. “When you gave a prescription to a patient not of the same political color as the mayor, he’d be told by the people at the mayor’s office there was no medicine even when they were still a lot,” the doctor says. “Color coding.”
by Jaileen F. Jimeno
LINGAYEN, Pangasinan — Since 1975, the year Pangasinan’s population office was created by then Gov. Aguedo Agbayani, Luz Muego’s life has been governed by numbers. At the time, Muego was a researcher at the office. Now she is the province’s population officer, but she is still preoccupied with all sorts of figures.
by Yvonne T. Chua
ALLAN EVANGELISTA of Quezon City signed up with the Doctors to the Barrio program last year despite suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, an incurable disease of the heart muscle that actor Aga Muhlach introduced to Filipinos through his 2004 movie “All My Life.”
by Avigail M. Olarte and Yvonne T. Chua
THE YOUNG mother was frantic. A seven-month-old baby was burning with fever in her arms, barely able to breathe. The doctor at the rural health unit quickly attended to the child, who was suffering from serious respiratory tract infection. But she had no medicine to give the baby: her supply of Ventolin or salbutamol, which would have given the infant instant relief, had run out.
by Jaileen F. Jimeno
THEY ARE not drug dealers or smugglers. They’re not even video pirates. But many nongovernmental organizations in the city of Manila are now feeling as if they were involved in an illicit trade. They do their transactions on the sly, with furtive glances cast here and there to check if someone is watching.
by Cecile C.A. Balgos
“TELL ME what you eat,” French food writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said almost two centuries ago, “and I shall tell you what you are.” In modern-day Philippines, those words still ring true, with the contents of a dining table revealing much about the diner, including the size of his wallet. Where one usually eats is a good indication of one’s status in life, especially in the cities like Metro Manila, where the dining divide is vast and prices and restaurant protocol discourage a commingling of paupers and princes. Of course, from time to time, the princes cross over and eat at Jollibee. Money, after all, gives one the privilege of having choices, which increase in proportion to the amount one can and is willing to spend. But it’s no guarantee of a discerning palate or good judgment, which is why restaurants with mediocre food and atrocious prices continue to exist and why well-heeled parents fill half their grocery carts with instant noodles for their kids
by Yvonne T. Chua
WHEN RCHARD Lariosa passed the medical board exam in late 2001, he did one thing most new doctors would not even think of. Then 26, Lariosa passed up residency training and applied at the Department of Health (DOH) to be a barrio doctor.
Eight months later, the young doctor was on an outrigger to Tagapul-an, a fifth-class mountainous island town in Western Samar oft-buffeted by the fickle, perilous amihan and habagat, or the northeast and southwest monsoons.
by Chit Estella
SMACK IN the heart of downtown Manila and around the Professional Regulation Commission can be found the country’s export processing zone for nurses. There, a dozen or so nursing schools and training centers have somehow converged and are thriving, mining the dreams of those aspiring to work overseas.
In one of these schools, students called upon to recite are admonished by the teacher to speak in English. “How can you work abroad if you can’t even answer in English?” the teacher tells them.
by Chit Estella
LANI, a radiology technologist in a government hospital in Quezon City, remembers the time when she moved among the best in her department. “We used to have good senior nurses here,” she says.
Then, almost suddenly, her co-workers started leaving. “That whole year, I kept seeing resignation papers,” recalls Lani. Even the aides were disappearing, going off to London or the United States or elsewhere for good. Today, out of the 40 staff members that she had originally worked with in the department, only four have stayed behind. But even they—including Lani—have either applied or are planning to apply for work abroad.
by Vinia M. Datinguinoo
LIKE MANY others in her generation, 11-year-old Clara Buenconsejo was bigger than her mother was at that age. In fact, she could no longer wear the clothes sold at the children’s section in department stores and her mother Malou had to scour shops selling surplus goods from the United States to find something that would fit her. But Clara’s size left Malou worried, not proud. The girl weighed 143 pounds, and by the time Malou brought her to a pediatric endocrinologist, Clara sported dark circles under her eyes and similar dark pigmentation on her nape, which the doctor would later point out as markers that a child is overweight.
