On the morning of September 19, I felt a sharp headache reverberate throughout my body whenever I moved. I thought it was just fatigue, having slept late and waking up too early during the week, moving from one meeting or activity to another. I joked that the worst thing this sickness could be was dengue.
Funnily enough, it was indeed dengue, and I was in the first stages of it. For two days, my fevers were shooting up to at least 40 degrees, which prompted a hospital visit. After a blood count, I was told that my symptoms were consistent with dengue.
The worse news came another two days later when my doctor informed me, after another blood count, that my platelets alarmingly decreased to 54. He advised me to be admitted to the hospital as soon as possible. I was reluctant—I worried about the staggering costs of confinement, but my mother insisted. Women do bleed, but I was bleeding profusely. I had no choice.
“We’re full!”
After a bumpy ride on the barangay ambulance, we arrived at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Alabang. There were only two nurses, a doctor, and a queue of patients with similar end stage dengue symptoms of bleeding gums and rashes like me.
I was brought to the triage area where one nurse quickly took my details, filled out a chart, and gave me an orange card with my name and patient number on it. Meanwhile, the lone doctor was attending to another patient in the emergency room.
The emergency room nurse would patiently say, “Ma’am/Sir full na po kami.” (Ma’am/Sir, we’re full.”) every time a new patient arrived seeking to be admitted. They could wait, she would always add, but it was uncertain when a bed would open up.
I waited another hour for a bed to become available, in a room where patients awaited admission, in what seemed to be a former office. It had four beds: two were occupied by siblings who also had dengue, I occupied the third one, and the fourth one was empty until it was eventually filled by a snakebite patient. A fifth patient was stationed just outside the “waiting room”, a wall separating him from the trash bins, comfort room, and waiting area. A sixth patient arrived much later, another snakebite victim, and a narrow folding bed was arranged for him.
It was humid, and the lights were dim, casting an uncomfortable atmosphere. The night was hot despite the rain, and there were only three electric fans. Then, everything became a blur.
Where’s our money?
The next day, I was brought upstairs to the ward where I shared another four-bed room with three other patients. The room was large enough to fit all of us and our guardians. The windows were wide open, allowing more light and fresh air to permeate the space. The comfort room was small though and leaking water from the tiles.
RITM’s dingy facilities needed an update, sure, but I still appreciated that their service was far better than some private hospitals. Nurses checked our vitals every two hours and we were given a sheet to record our fluid intake and release. The doctors who came in once a day handled patient after patient, including the ones in the outpatient department. The staff, despite their lack of rest, always smiled at patients and answered every question.
When I was finally feeling better after the third day of admission, we were approached by a social worker who told us we could pay in full or at a discounted price. The hospital bill amounted to around Php20,000 for the four-day stay, a price that was fortunately covered by PhilHealth’s dengue package.
But what about my other expenses on previous clinic visits and laboratory tests? My mother and I had to pay Php20,000 out of pocket, creating a dent in our already limited finances. The patient in the other bed confided that they were billed around Php43,000 for their six-day admission—they wouldn’t know where to get the money to pay for it.
I recalled the irony as my mind cleared: The Marcos Jr government defended the transfer of Php89.9 billion in alleged excess PhilHealth funds to the national treasury. The Supreme Court stopped the transfer, and it was later revealed that the funds, originally intended for health workers’ benefits, among others, were redirected to boost the controversial corruption-prone unprogrammed appropriations.
Focusing our anger
Filipinos depend on PhilHealth to pay their hospital bills— especially since direct health services are neglected by the state, and in place is profit-oriented privatized healthcare, and the social determinants of health are in an era of joblessness and poverty. If there is something that should be boosted, it should be the overwhelmed healthcare system—it requires much more support for wider coverage including diseases prevention.
As I was being wheeled out of the hospital, I took vivid mental note of RITM’s decrepit condition: the rusty wheelchairs, the limited seating and fans in the waiting areas, the dimness of the hospital walls, and the overwhelming number of patients. These were details that I may have overlooked in my dazed condition while recovering from dengue and while receiving compassionate care from our underpaid health workers.
My blood count was back to normal, but I was angry. It’s not dengue that can bleed Filipinos to death, it’s the dismal state of the healthcare system. Then everything just came to focus.