IBA, Zambales – Gov. Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. launched his mobile clinic program here on Tuesday (April 17), making good on his promise to bring health care and medical services closer to Zambales residents, especially the poor.
The Zambales mobile clinic program, which will make use of two fully-air conditioned vehicles — a bus outfitted with X-ray, ultrasound, and electrocardiogram (ECG) machines, and a cargo van with dental equipment, is the first of its kind in the Philippines.
After their blessing here at Capitol grounds, the mobile clinics were immediately dispatched to an ongoing medical mission in Palauig town that was initiated by Zambales Second District Rep. Jun Omar Ebdane.
In unveiling his mobile clinic program, the governor said that his goal of providing an efficient health care system to every Zambaleño is being realized now.
“This is a very important aspect of the Zambales health care delivery system because it makes public services accessible to virtually everyone in the province,” Ebdane said.
“If the patients aren’t well enough, or are too poor to go to the hospital, then we will bring the hospital and the doctors to them,” he added.
Ebdane said that under the mobile clinic program, medical and dental teams will be scheduled to visit the barangays.
From the mobile clinics, doctors and dentists from the provincial government, as well as volunteer private practitioners, can conduct examination of patients even in remote villages, while nurses and technicians can perform X-ray, sonology, and electrocardiograph checks.
Dr. Emy Edejer, one of the doctors assigned by Ebdane to set up the program, said the governor is also looking into the possibility of fitting the mobile clinic with anesthesia machines and a collapsible bed to enable doctors to perform emergency surgery in the field.
“In some cases like accidents and other emergencies, this might be necessary to save lives,” Edejer added.
“We may find the need to immediately operate on victims while they are being transported to the hospital, and time is always a crucial factor in these cases.”
Ebdane also said that the mobile clinic services will be rendered for free to indigents. But at the same time, he called on his constituents who are financially better-off to avail of the regular health services at government clinics or hospitals, except in emergency situations.
He also said the mobile clinics and equipment were sourced out privately, and thus will remain under the care and maintenance of a private group. “But as long as I’m the governor, these will be used by the provincial government for its health projects,” he added.
Residents, meanwhile, expressed their gratitude to the governor for the vast improvements in health services that were introduced under Ebdane’s administration.
Since his election in 2010, Ebdane began a program to rehabilitate the three government hospitals in the province, and installed brand-new X-ray, CT-Scan and ultrasound machines at the Zambales provincial hospital at no cost to the government.
He was also able to source out donations of four brand-new ambulances in November last year, and three other brand-new units this year.
Dr. Edejer said these represented a big leap in local health services. “For so many years, our hospitals were very poorly equipped, and there was practically no ambulance that was running well because of lack of funds.
Now Zambales has eight new ambulances and modern equipment in the hospitals. This is a huge achievement of the governor that simply cannot be ignored,” he added.
