The Candoni RHU Staff

As part of the requirements for PHILHEALTH Accreditation, my staff and I took on our uniforms and posed for the camera last Monday. The rest of the municipal employees were surprised to see my nurses in their whites, my midwives in their scrub suits and me in my immaculate white lab gown. Even the mayor commended us for looking so nice and so professional. "Daw ma ospital na gid ta diri sa Candoni," said SB Dolores Tomol, chairman for health. In due time, Candoni will have its own Infirmary. In fact, during my first local health board meeting with the mayor last Thursday, the plans for the infirmary was one of the major agenda. During the LHB meeting, I also updated the mayor of our upcoming activities for the Month of February, which is also Cardiovascular Diseases Month, a.k.a Heart Month. We will be launching our heart Month activities on Valentine's Day, a week late, because Candoni will be having its town fiesta on February 6-11, 2008. One of the more ambitious projects for the Heart Month is the Mountain Marathon which will be held on the 29th. During my staff meeting, I told them of my plans for the Heart Month and all of my barangay midwives are very supportive. Anyway, more plans are on the way for Candoni's RHU.

I am looking forward to a lot of opportunities to do some service to the community and to leave some form of legacy in this side of Negros Occidental. It is a tough job ahead, with a meager budget to consider, but the growing family of the RHU (with 6 volunteer nurses and 4 volunteer midwives just recently added)is a testament to the growing excitement and enthusiasm of Candonians.

So far, I have been very busy planning and putting up my reforms for the RHU. Every Monday and Tuesday, I am conducting lectures and classes with my nurses and midwives, teaching them of the latest health updates and about other health topics, even pathophysiology of diseases and how they can at least identify or intervene when faced with such a case.

Lately, my entire week was filled with meetings. Last Monday, meeting with deparment heads for the town fiesta; Tuesday, meeting with barangay captains for the mechanics of my pet project Candoni's Best and the proposal to start putting up Botika ng Barangay; Wednesday, regular staff meeting about the upcoming Heart Month; Thursday, local health board meeting with the Mayor; Friday, meeting at the Provincial Health Office. It is a tough job to be a municipal Health officer. It is not for the faint-hearted.

There are times that I enjoy the job. There are times that I miss the action inside the hospital. There are times that I feel homesick. There are times that I feel so inadequate, so limited. But all the time I feel like I am on a mission or something. I feel a calling to serve and since I don't have a security of tenure in this kind of set-up, I feel pressured to do my best in whatever amount of time that has been given to me.

Every night, I still have to read my medical books and re-read them during the day when work is little and patients are scarce. But nowhere in the medical books said about budgeting and financing, or auditing or politics, or about filling up reports to be submitted to DOH or all those stuff inside a public health office. Medical school has only prepared me to become a physician. It has not fully prepared me to become a rural doctor, something which this country badly needs.

Thus, everyday is a learning process for me, especially on dealing with various kinds of personalities. So far, I have learned tact and patience. Of course, my only advantage is my skilled use of my humor. So far, it has been my source of respite.

Life is beginning to become more interesting in Candoni. And I hope that this interest for life can swell up far beyond Tabla Valley.