Lady doctor sticks it out with San Jose de Buan

By NINFA B. QUIRANTE, PIA-Samar
January 24, 2006

CATBALOGAN, Samar  – Doctor to the Barrios program ‘survivor’ Dr. Phoebe dela Cruz continues her personal cause of delivering basic health services to San Jose de Buan folks.

She is considered a survivor because most of her peers have left the program for greener pastures while she along with a few doctors more committed have stayed.

It is not easy to stay in a place called San Jose de Buan, this writer realizes that and salutes the pretty doctor for having the will to stay. For one, San Jose de Buan is in the interior part of Samar accessible from the highway by a 40-kilometer dirt road that turns muddy on rainy days. Even farther still is Catbalogan, some 30 km more considered second home to most of Buananons.

Trucks and buses plying the Catbalogan-San Jose de Buan route gets only one trip each. Leaving San Jose de Buan as early as twelve midnights the truck reaches Catbalogan at six or seven in the morning. It returns to de Buan at ten in the morning and reaches de Buan at two in the afternoon.

For Dr. Dela Cruz, who hails from Matuginao, everyday is a constant challenge. She is dealing with patients whose houses are far in between. When her medical team visits, they would virtually turn any place, any field, any shade, and even a riverbank to a clinic to accommodate ‘mobile’ patients. The farthest, Baranagay Gusa, the pretty doctor said could be reached by an 8-12 hour trek. This is specially done on immunization days when her staff is at its busiest. Why? Despite the distance, they posted close to a hundred percent immunization success in the most recent Ligtas Tigdas campaign. Meeting some obstinate patients is also difficult for this UP educated lass. But when she reasons out and explains the other side, she wins them. She said they are only difficult when they have not talked to me, once they do, they become cooperative.

Health and sanitation has been too wanting in this frontier town the first time she came. With only two midwives and one nurse to serve some 14 barangays, the staff works doubly hard to cover all prospective patients. Dela Cruz said that they would sometimes turn their health center into a mini hospital to save patients who may not make it to Catbalogan, where the provincial hospital is located.

Life in this frontier town would have been unbearable had it not been for the full support of Mayor Ananias Rebato, she said who is very supportive of the health and sanitation program she has mapped out with her staff. These include readily available medicines, maternal and child health program, family planning, feeding program. Lately, she said she proposed the purchase of weighing scales to support her nutrition program, this, aside from fervently pushing the people to set up a "Gulayan sa Barangay". This she said is a communal vegetable garden where people join forces to plant and then to harvest its fruits later. The lady doctor has to grapple up with a 30% malnutrition status, though she did not discount the fact that unavailability of weighing scales may have caused it. Rebato has pledged to provide the seeds for the Gulayan project. She said she also proposed a purchase of sanitary latrines for distribution.

When this writer requested her to write a journal for her many ‘adventures’, the young doctor could not help recalling her ‘close encounter’ with the CPP/NPA raid in March 17, 2004. The town was raided then, and because the health center is just opposite the municipal hall, they were all trembling with fear for their lives. Fortunately, the PNP forces did not give up and continued the fight. Rebels then were forced to retreat. Real work then started for the doctor and her staff who had to attend to the wounded. With fear still lurking in her heart, but reinforced by her Hippocratic Oath, she applied first aid to the wounded before they were airlifted.

The experience though did not waver her resolve to serve the Buananons, she feels, these are the people who really need her and she should stay. She has been at home here and has developed love and care for her rural ward.

Lito Obidos from Medoroma confirms the doctor’s dedication when he said, "hiya it am simbolo hit gobyerno nga nalingi ha amon." (She symbolizes the government who still cares for us.) For him, only the health personnel and occasionally, DENR visit their remote barangay. Of course, he added that government soldiers also do. The doctor’s visit, he said is always a big event, they treat her with native foods-and sometimes all-night dancing (sarayaw) their symbol of gratitude.

Life for Dr. Dela Cruz is not that drab though, she has a TV set and a cell phone, oh yes! There is a cell site in the hinterlands. These have become her link to the bigger world outside. She also periodically visits Tacloban for a taste of the city air. But at the end of the day, she longs to return to San Jose de Buan and once more feel the warmth of the Buananons!