Pre-hospital care aims to improve patient health outcomes prior to a more comprehensive and definitive management in a healthcare facility or hospital. This is through the early recognition of signs and symptoms, and the application of timely, basic, yet potentially lifesaving measures, thereby reducing patient morbidity and mortality. Time is an important resource, which pre-hospital care recognizes and hence tries to make full use of. By ‘stabilizing’ patients prior to their transport or transfer to a more capable healthcare facility, pre-hospital care grants ‘more time or leeway’ for patients to tolerate transport and other possible delays to definitive management, minimizing possible disease complications.
The documentary highlights the importance of pre-hospital care, or rather, shows what the lack of it can lead to: patients needlessly suffering from, or even dying to curable diseases. Lack of access to primary care is another thing altogether, but in the mountains of Bansud, Oriental Mindoro, even pre-hospital care is unavailable. There is no doctor or healthcare worker in the village who can see and provide early management to patients prior to the grueling 3- to 4-hour trek to the healthcare center at the urban part of town, and as a consequence, there are times when patients die in the middle of the journey down the mountain, and simple diseases spiral uncontrolled and develop otherwise preventable complications. With the village’s pre-hospital care lacking, the village people who develop acute conditions pretty much have to leave it to fate that they arrive just in time at nearest clinic or hospital for delayed treatment.
It is horrifying to know that the story of the people of Bansud is one amongst many in this country. For a relatively modern country boasting an improving economy and rapid urbanization, the Philippines should be doing more for the health of her people.