Brilliant ideas don’t have to come from the government.
“Next Tuesday, Nov 19, the Philippine Medical Association’s (PMA) Doctors on Boats will set sail on a ‘floating hospital’ with health professionals with different specializations and nurses to provide medical and relief services to the typhoon-devastated areas of Samar province,” reports Jeannette I. Andrade in Philippine Daily Inquirer.
According to PMA president Leo Olarte, the ship, which is owned by one of the group’s members, can be loaded with up to 15 to 16 ten-wheeler trucks of supplies including medicine, clothing, and food. The ship can serve as a “mini-hospital” and will be staffed more than 100 volunteer doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and psychologists from the different medical partners of PMA, including the Philippine Dental Association, the Philippine Nurses’ Association, the Philippine National Red Cross and the Department of Health-National Capital Region (DOH-NCR).
Though Olarte expressed concern in “the seeming breakdown of law and order in the the areas that were hit the hardest by Typhoon Yolanda,” he said the project will still push through. They will coordinate with the Philippine National Police.
Olarte revealed that the ship will first dock at Guiuan, Eastern Samar and then Allen, Northern Samar. He explained that the ship will stay in these first two areas “for at most a week and then go on to serve some 20,000 residents in the calamity-stricken sites.”
Photo from MorgueFile
