A lot of people seem to love medical missions, judging by how often there is news of persons or groups organizing or sponsoring them, and the number of people who flock to the mission venues. It’s become a common enough practice to raise questions about the reasons they proliferate, and their roles within the whole health care system.
One good example I personally knew about had to do with a high school classmate who studied medicine in this country and then moved to the U.S. She practiced there as a surgeon for almost three decades, incidentally greatly prospered, and then decided she wanted to give something back to the country of her youth. She persuaded fellow specialist doctors to join her, made arrangements with a hospital in her province, and all other preparations for a two-week stint of specialist medical services to the disadvantaged among her kababayans. I can imagine that many people were served with quality medical interventions they might not otherwise have had access to.
More often though, it’s local organizations or persons that sponsor such activities held in covered courts, gyms, schoolhouses or such venues.
When I’ve asked people who’ve been involved, it seems that what happens are mostly basic medical consultations, free medicines given out, sometimes eye or dental examinations, teeth might be pulled, children taught correct teeth cleaning, toothbrushes handed out, circumcision of boys is occasionally offered. (A provincial health official thought it was the “freebies”, the medicines, vitamins, eyeglasses, toothbrushes, etc. that people were after.) Our municipal women’s group even used to arrange a day for free pap smears and breast examinations.
One good outcome of these activities is when people who are seen to need more serious examination in a proper medical setting can be persuaded to do so.
Do medical missions mean that the established health care system that should serve even outlying areas does not work well enough? Are there adequate supplies and medical personnel where they are needed? Is it the fact that doctors’ services and medicines are given for free that draws people to a medical mission?
The popularity of the medical mission phenomenon seems to call into question the effectiveness of the government health care system itself.
Then there is something else at play that recent local news made plain. Two competing candidates in the coming elections held medical missions (perhaps inadvertently) in one and the same municipality on the same day, with the candidates’ representatives claiming that more people went to their event than to the opponent’s.
The offer of medical services is then exposed as a contest to gain credibility with voters.
There are too many distasteful examples of public officials or aspirants to public office advertising themselves as the sponsors of medical missions, public services, sports events, entertainments and the like. When I once walked into a gym where such a medical activity was taking place, a public address announcement was being made about which eminences had donated what.
How will people learn that the provision of health services is a basic component of governance, and not a favor received through the generosity of particular persons or groups? When will the bar of public discourse be raised away from the backwardness of politics based on personal loyalty and gratitude?
Ideology can even come into play when military entities local or foreign play the medical mission game as a winning-hearts-and-minds strategy.
Many election promises will be coming up! It will be interesting to note how much attention is paid to the many needs of the health care system, especially at the barangay and community levels, to the sorry state of district hospitals, to the need to attract and engage more doctors.
It remains too little understood that health care is not a charity concern, but a central component of sound development efforts.
