Go opens 109th Malasakit Center in Maguindanao
HEALTH • 07:15 AM Wed May 12, 2021
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By:
Noel Y. Punzalan/PNA
NEW MALASAKIT CENTER. Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go unveils the marker for a Malasakit Center at the Cotabato Sanitarium Hospital (CSH) n Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao on Tuesday (May 11, 2021).
SULTAN KUDARAT, Maguindanao --Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go opened Tuesday the 109th Malasakit Center in the country at the Cotabato Sanitarium Hospital (CSH) here.
Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo and Maguindanao Governor Bai Mariam Sangki-Mangudadatu accompanied the senator here together with other representatives of national government agencies.
“This center is to make you feel that you are not forgotten by President Rodrigo Duterte,” the senator told health officials, nurses, and several beneficiaries.
Go said the center would receive a monthly PHP3-million funding from the Office of the President to further help poor and indigent patients of the hospital.
The Malasakit Center is a One-Stop-Shop where indigent patients can quickly access financial medical assistance from agencies such as PhilHealth, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
“Our goal here is to let the indigent patients go home without paying any hospital bill, yet given ample services required of the hospital,” Go said.
On April 24, the senator said his office has provided the CSH management with PHP5-million for the center, but added that he would add funding of PHP5 million more for the operation of the facility.
“We must look at each other’s welfare, just as what the government is doing to us,” Go said.
Mangudadatu noted that the province has now two Malasakit centers, with the first one also opened by Go in December 2019.
“We thank much the President and Senator Go for these two facilities currently attending to the needs of the indigents,” the governor said.
While here, Go also distributed food packs, bicycles, computer tablets to the front-liners.
For his part, CSH chief Dr. Ibrahim Pangato Jr. has asked the senator about a pending bill in Congress on the possible expansion of the hospital to a 200-bed capacity infirmary.
Go said he would look into the matter and urge colleagues in Congress to act on it immediately.
Currently, CSH has an actual bed occupancy of 80 beds manned by 270 personnel.
In May last year, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s Ministry of Public Works has completed in 40 days a PHP21-million, 100-bed capacity isolation facility at the back portion of the CSH compound. (PNA)