Lanao del Sur’s new COVID-19 isolation facility now operating
BANGSAMORO NEWS UPDATES • 13:15 PM Wed Jan 20, 2021
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By:
John M. Unson
The newly-constructed COVID-19 isolation facility in Marantao, Lanao del Sur. (Courtesy of Lanao del Sur governor’s office)
MARAWI CITY --- Officials launched Tuesday the new P22 million worth 100-bed capacity COVID-19 isolation facility in Lanao del Sur province that the Bangsamoro government built using regional funds.
Naguib Sinarimbo, local government minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, representatives from BARMM’s public works ministry and local executives together facilitated the turnover of the building to the Lanao del Sur Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) on Tuesday morning.
Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong, Jr., chairperson of the provincial disaster risk reduction and management council, said he is grateful to the BARMM government for providing the province with a P22 million worth COVID-19 isolation facility.
The facility, to be managed by personnel of the Lanao del Sur IPHO under physician Allen Minalang, is located in the municipality of Marantao near Marawi City.
The BARMM government constructed, from between July to November last year, prototype isolation facilities each in the compound of the Cotabato Sanitarium Hospital and in the Datu Blah Sinsuat District Hospital in Sultan Kudarat and Upi towns in Maguindanao, respectively.
The isolation facilities in Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur were constructed by BARMM’s Ministry of Public Works.
“We are thankful to the BARMM leadership for embarking on this project in the first district of Lanao del Sur. This is a big support to our anti-pandemic initiatives in this part of the Bangsamoro region,” Adiong said.
Sinarimbo and other BARMM officials also led, in a separate event Tuesday, the groundbreaking rite for the construction of another COVID-19 isolation facility in the premises of the Doctor Serapio Montañer Memorial Hospital in Malabang town in the second district of Lanao del Sur.
Sinarimbo, spokesperson of BARMM, is also overseeing on concurrent capacity the Rapid Emergency Action on Disaster Incidence, or READI contingent, comprised disaster and calamity response teams that are also involved as frontliners in the regional government's war on COVID-19.
Lanao del Sur has high prevalence of coronavirus infection cases owing to its having so porous borders with Bukidnon, Lanao del Norte and Iligan City in Region 10 and in a number of towns in Zamboanga del Sur in Region 9.
Such geographical setting is a serious constraint affecting the Lanao del Sur provincial government’s enforcement of quarantine regulations along arterial exit and entry points in the province, according to Adiong.