Residents of earthquake hit areas in Negros Oriental not only need food and water, they need hospitals and medical supplies.

Earthquake-injured patients, some in very serious condition in Guihulgan, Negros Oriental, had to be treated outdoors in a makeshift hospital short on supplies and sanitation.

That is because when the magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit at 11:49 a.m. Monday, the walls and floors of the Guilhulngan District Hospital cracked and parts of its ceiling came falling down, Dr. Hugh Parsons told the DAILY STAR.

Parsons, a leading Canadian ophthalmologist and also a retina specialist, and the 14-member eye team from Canada that he heads, were on their way to La Libertad town for a scheduled medical mission Monday.

When they could not get through the roads to La Libertad, they decided to proceed to Guihulngan to lend a hand and got there at about 2 p.m., about two hours after the quake had hit, after managing to get through stones blocking the road.

“When we arrived patients had been moved out on to the lawn because the hospital was unsafe,” said Parsons, who has led 11 medical missions to the Philippines through the years.

His team is composed of four doctors, nurses and support staff.

FANTASTIC JOB

“The nurses there were doing a fantastic job organizing casualties, we worked through the night as the injured and even the dead were rushed in,” he said.

Parsons said they only left when things slowed to a trickle Tuesday, to proceed to Bacolod where they are conducting a free medical mission for eye patients, which includes surgery, at the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital.

Because of lack of facilities in Guihulgan the only thing they could do was stabilize patients in serious condition until ambulances from San Carlos arrived between 1 and 2 a.m. Tuesday, he said.

One could only get to Guihulngan from the north through roads filled with rocks, as the roads and bridges from the south were destroyed, he said.

Patients with many fractures, and lots of cuts and abrasions from debris were being brought in, most of them with serious trauma, he said.

“We could only put splints on those with fractures, there were no supplies to set fractures nor anesthesia,” he said.

He said they also sutured a lot of wounds.

They tried to send home people who were stable as quickly as possible to clear the area for more coming in, he said.

They were so busy with people coming and going, Parsons said he could not say how many patients were brought to the hospital.

PEOPLE DAZED

“When we first got there everybody was dazed, quite a lot of people moved out of their homes for fear of a tsunami, a lot of places were empty…churches buildings and houses had collapsed,” he said.

At the hospital was a nurse who had worked there for 17 years, he said.

Four of the high school classmates of the nurse’s daughter had died in the quake, and the bodies of two of them were at the hospital lawn, he said.

The nurse helpedheal the injured but did not know what had happened to her father who lived in a place where many had perished in a landslide, he said.

The nurse kept trying to call her father but the lines were down and when there was finally a connection at around 2 a.m. Tuesday she could not reach her father, he said.

The nurse worried all through the night and Parsons said he did not know if she ever found her father.

It showed that the lives of everybody in that area had been seriously affected, with friends or loved ones injured or dead, he said.

Parsons said that, in between treating patients, they lay down under a cement covered area but when the earth shook they would run out and return to try to lie down again when things calmed. “That was until we got tired of running out when there was a tremor and decided to stay outside,” he said.

There was slight rain and the patients outdoors got wet, but by about 3 a.m. tarps were found to cover half of the patients, he said.

MEDICAL NEEDS

Parsons said he was informed that thehospital in La Libertad had also been affected by the quake and was unsafe.

Some permanent accommodations need to be set up to attend to medical needs in La Libertad and Guihulgran, which Parsons said should be a priority even before the roads are repaired.

“With it being difficult to get into those areas, I don’t know where they will treatpatients in serious condition,” he said.

They clearly do not have the facilities for that, he said, adding that when they left Tuesday, people had no potable water and were running out of food.

They have no capability to sterilize hospital equipment, they are running out of medical supplies such as local anesthetics, sutures, syringes and needles, he said.

Parsons said what his team saw was quite a shock.

LOCAL STAFF, FOLK COMMENDED

Parsons who has conducted medical missions in China, Cambodia Vietnam and Thailand, too, said he had never seen anythingon the scale of what he saw in Guihulngan. He commended the local medical staff for the spectacular work they were doing under such conditions.

He said it amazes him how the people, despite what they had gone through, were ready to work to help others, were polite and even managed smiles.

“I was aware of the Filipino people’s resiliency but what I saw there drove it home for me,” Parsons said.

People said they were thankful the quake hit in the daytime and that it was not raining hard, they still found the good in the situation, he said.

And in the morning people were fixing their houses and a man, on his own, was trying to fix the road so vehicles could pass, Parsons said.

Somebody brought us as far he could, never expecting anything for it, and the police and Army helped us move our supplies, he said.

The people there all seemed to have this “yes we can” attitude, and the spirit of wanting to help in whatever way they could, he said.

But Parsons said, the people of Guihulngan clearly need a lot of help.

The doctor said he took a lot of pictures and when he gets home to Canada he will try to raise some funds to helpthe victims, especially with their hospital needs.

Parsons, is married to Tina Aquino, a Filipino doctor.*CPG

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