By JUNE S. BLANCO
ONE more step to go, and the Rep. Erico Aristotle Aumentado’s bill upgrading the bed capacity of the Don Emilio del Valle Memorial Hospital (DEDVMH) will be transmitted for approval by the President.
The Senate has approved on third and final reading the counterpart bill sponsored by Senator Sherwin Gatchalian upping the hospital’s bed capacity from 50 to 300 – with the attendant improvement of its buildings, equipment, staff.
Aumentado thanks Gatchalian and Committee on Health Chair JV Ejercito for the supporting his move at the Lower House.
The bill is now en route to the bicameral conference committee for consolidation and polishing prior to transmittal to the Office of the President.
Aumentado said slowly but surely, “We are getting there (upgrading)!”
He said in its current state, the hospital is getting congested because patients coming not only from the 2nd District, but the 3rd District also, as well as from the island municipality of President Carlos P. Garcia and even Southern Leyte choose to be treated or confined there.
Aumentado attributes this to the improved facilities and better services the hospital now offers on account of its ongoing modernization program.
He said the Del Valle hospital has come a long way from its moniker “del valle-bad” (balibad is to decline) because its previously poor facilities cannot handle emergency needs like Caesarian sections or stab and gunshot wounds.
Through the years, however, started by the solon’s namesake father and immediate congressional predecessor, former governor Erico Boyles Aumentado, the hospital has established dialysis units, expanded its obstetrics and gynecology department, improved its administration building and services, acquired a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment – the first government hospital hereabouts to offer this service, and is now International Standards Organization (ISO) certified.