Pre-hospital care bridges people with acute life-threatening or high-risk conditions to have immediate access to critical care in emergency and urgent situations. Having enough and accessible facilities, transportation services, materials, and human resources are a must for this to take place. In our country, it is a sad reality that many of the far-flung areas still lack in pre-hospital management resources and thus impair their access to emergency care.
Ambulansiyang de Paa showed the lack in ready services that could bring people from the remote areas of Oriental Mindoro to the appropriate health facilities in case of emergencies. The locals depend on sheer and raw ambulatory strength and traverse mountains for long hours to transport the sick.
Building new hospitals and health facilities is useless if people would not be able to access them anyway. And even in the presence of many ambulances or any transport vehicle in a health facility, if there are no roads by which these can pass and reach the far-flung areas, the access to pre-hospital care would remain unresolved. Support from the government to build access roads in these isolated and disadvantaged communities is also a concern, resulting in the perpetuation of the problem.
Another issue that surfaced in the documentary is the lack of health care workers in the rural areas. Only one physician is assigned to a municipal health office or health center. If the physician must attend conferences or any personal matter, no one relieves him or her. Thus, a community is left with no medical help. This issue on the distribution of healthcare workers and facilities must be dealt as well.
Even if pre-hospital care is available and there are adequate facilities, access roads, and health care workers, these services would still be inaccessible if it is not state-funded or if the services are costly. Thus, government support is definitely needed.
It is heart-breaking to witness people dying to treatable conditions and know that the lack of access to care is what actually killed them. More so, it is disturbing to feel comfortable in the availability of all these resources in the suburb while the rural or remote areas seem to have been left behind.