DATU HOFER AMPATUAN, Maguindanao del Sur (MindaNews / 9 Oct) — The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) finally has its own regional hospital with the upgrading of the Maguindanao Provincial Hospital on Wednesday.
“Today is so meaningful because finally, we can say we now have our own regional hospital,” said Dr. Hashemi Dilangalen, health committee chair of the Bangsamoro Parliament, during the launch of the Bangsamoro Regional Hospital and Medical Center (BRHMC) here.
He said that the creation of the regional hospital aligns with the BARMM’s priorities—health, education, and social services.
The transition is mandated by Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 74, which was passed in May this year.
Dilangalen noted the plight of patients in the area “who have to travel for hours” just to get proper medical treatment. “They are already sick, tired, yet they still have to deal with the distance and the expense,” he added. Some, Dilangalen said, “didn’t make it in time.”
“We are bringing the services closer to the people,” said Deputy Speaker Baintan Ampatuan, who authored the bill. “No need to go far, it’s already at their doorstep,” she added.
For a long while, many Maguindawons needing specialized medical treatment needed to travel to the cities of Cotabato, Davao or General Santos.
BAA 74 mandates that the provincial hospital, currently at Level II, will be upgraded to a Level III hospital and to have a 350-bed capacity. It now has over 200 beds.
For it to become a Level III hospital, BRHMC needs to comply with certain requirements set by the Bureau of Health Facilities and Services of the Department of Health. Among these is for the medical center to be a teaching or training hospital with accredited residency training programs for physicians in the four major specialties: medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, and surgery.
“When a city or a province has a tertiary hospital, it becomes a specialty training center,” said Dilangalen. “Our fellow Bangsamoro doctors will no longer have to go to other places, no longer have to go to Davao or Manila, but can now train here,” he added.
The also DOH requires Level III hospitals to provide trauma and stroke care, oncology and wellness center, physical medicine and rehabilitation unit, ambulatory surgical clinic, dialysis facility, and a blood bank.
Furthermore, the DOH requires the hospital to have “licensed tertiary clinical laboratory with standard equipment/reagents/supplies necessary for the performance of histopathology examinations” and a “licensed Level III imaging facility with interventional radiology.”
According to BAA 74, the BRHMC will remain under the administrative supervision of the BARMM’s Ministry of Health, and will have an initial appropriation of ₱50 million to be charged against the 2025 General Appropriations Act of the regional government. “Thereafter, funds necessary for the operations of the hospital shall be included in the annual appropriations for the following year of its enactment,” BAA 74 added.
Ampatuan said the initial funding was “for mobilization,” but added that Level III hospitals usually have budget of at least ₱1.2 billion annually. (Ferdinandh Cabrera / MindaNews)
