The debilitating effects of trying to maintain life-time dialysis have caught up with Emilia Atiwon, a 61-year old widow who, like many in her condition, is grappling with the continuous need to support her blood-cleansing sessions scheduled twice a week.
An unemployed widow with three sons, Atiwon had taken odd jobs as domestic and as laborer sanding and smoothening woodcarvings for sale at Asin Road Barangay here.
Her first two sons are woodcarvers while the third assists her in going to and from her dialysis treatment at Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center. Their combined earnings of P600 a day falls short of the cost of one hemodialysis session, which is pegged at P1,200, excluding maintenance medicines.
In a social case study report, social worker Anbnie Germaine Alngangeo said the “family has been indebted to her relatives for her past hospitalizations and could not rely on the children beause their incomes also are below the threshold”.
The family has gone to the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, the Philhealth, senators, congressmen and support agencies in an effort to sustain her dialysis.
Faced with this common problem of where to get the next dialysis fund, patients here recently got the support of the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club, the organization of media practitioners based in the city, to launch a signature campaign to make dialysis a free medical service.
Dialysis is being rendered free to patients in the United States of America and other countries, given the fact that it is an emergency medical procedure, with dire consequences if the patient misses a treatment or two.
The BCBC move is supported by resolutions backing the signature campaign passed by the city Sangguniang, the Benguet provincial sanggunian, municipal and barangay councils in the Cordillera.
Earlier, the city council and city mayor Mauricio Domogan worked out with the Philealth the doubling of Philhealth support to dialysis patients from 45 to 90 sessions a year.
The figure, however, still falls short of the average 104 treatment sessions a patient has to undergo a year. That allocation is further whittled down each time a patient is hospitalized.
In moving for free dialysis, the BCBC, together with the Philippine Information Agency, noted that while senators and congressmen have medical support funds, these are not easily accessible for patients whose requests for support are stymied by documents they still have to submit to back up their pleas.
Free dialysis can be had if only senators and congressmen pool their medical resource funds from where can be drawn expenses, without patients having to submit letter-quests for assistance, social case study reports, medical certificates and the like and hope that help would come.
Meanwhile, Samaritans out there wanting to help patient Atiwon may get in touch through her cellphone number 09156688413. ** Ramon Dacawi
