MANILA, Jan. 30, 2014— A Church-based group will troop to the Supreme Court next week to support the filing of complaint against the privatization of the country’s only public orthopedic hospital.
The Churchpeople Workers Solidarity said they are behind the Alliance of Health Workers’ move to file a complaint at the SC against the privatization of the Philippine Orthopedic Center on Feb. 3.
“We are inviting the church people to support the filing of this formal suit at the SC,” the CWS secretariat said.
On Nov. 21, 2013, the Aquino administration approved the privatization of the POC, which the CWS lamented as one of the government’s “worst gift to Filipino people”.
The group warned of its “terrifying effects” on the poor, noting that some 450-500 indigent patients avail of free service daily in the POC outpatients department.
They added that approximately 80-90 percent of hospitalized patients are poor who defend only on free medicines, supplies and procedures available in the hospital.
“It is essentially government’s abandonment of its social responsibility to provide public health to the poor people,” Sr. Lydia Lascano, CWS convenor, earlier said.
According to her, the supposed “modernization” of the government-owned hospitals is a mindset to generateprofits for private companies.