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An article on Filipino Freethinkers captured why an alliance between UNAIDS and the Roman Catholic Church on the issue of HIV and AIDS awareness and prevention can be quite a head scratcher. The piece by Filipino Freethinkers President Red Tani sure shows the fundamental contradictions between the stances of the two groups. While UNAIDS supports the idea of the giving out of condoms to decrease the likelihood of virus transmission, the church (and the Pope for that matter) have been preaching the idea that giving away condoms to people will only make them more likely to be promiscuous – hence leading to more cases of infection.

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If you have waded through the flood waters, please consider taking two tablets of doxycycline. It is an antibiotic that is supposedly not to be sold over the counter, but since we’re in the Philippines, you could probably get them even without a prescription.

If you’ve been exposed to flood water, take 2 100mg tabs of doxycycline and your chances of getting leptospirosis should somewhat diminish. This drug is relatively safe and very cheap. This is not to be taken by pregnant women or very young children though.

If you want to help, please read Manolo Quezon’s post.

Stay safe guys.

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I was assigned to rotate through different services in the Pediatric department and after an entire month of being exposed to young patients, it’s impossible to be unaffected by the degree of suffering, depression, hopelessness – and most tragically — loss.

These children are up against the toughest diseases. Some of them face the tall odds of fighting cancer at a tender age. There are babies who are also barely holding on to life while having all sorts of tubes attached to them. And then there are others with faulty hearts, kidneys and brains. They are all in one big hall – a ward – that holds the stories of sixty or so children. Each tale will tug at your heartstrings once you hear about how one mother has gone to all her province’s elected officals for help or how one father has tried working two jobs just to make ends meet.

And then… you hear that one patient has developed a pneumonia. But it’s not simple bug that goes away with the usual medication. Hospital-acquired pneumonias are notorious for being aggressive and expensive to treat. Drugs needed for therapy usually run up to about 3000 php (~75 USD!) per vial and multiple vials may be needed everyday. Clearly, most of us don’t have the money to  help out in chemotherapy and other drug expenses, so the best way for us to make a a difference is to at least do our part in making these patients and their families and comfortable and as happy as possible while they are  in the hospital.

In accordance with this, my mom and I decided to extend a simple gesture to the patients at the charity wards. On February 21, 2009, we will go to the wards to distribute  snacks, groceries and other knick knacks  that we could give the kids. If you guys have any thing that the kids could appreciate, you’re more than welcome to join us or bring em over. You may also drop by at the wards anytime  – it’s usually packed all the time so there will be lots  of kids who would appreciate your gifts.

Here are things that I think the kids would appreciate:

• Toys – keep in mind that patients aged newborn to late teener.
• children’s books
• crayons, coloring books
• clothes

Donations so far:

2/13 – A very generous woman who requested to be anonymous donated dozens of stuffed toys! Thank you ma’am! I’m sure the kids would love your gifts.

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Medical charts (or medical records) are in a lot of ways, similar to blogs. These folders contain the clinical picture of each patient that a medical facility has seen. In the Philippine General Hospital, these charts are the manuals and the how-to’s of managing a certain disease entity. Once a patient enters the wards, he or she gets assigned to service (think team) of doctors and students. That service will be responsible for that  particular patient for the rest of his/her stay at the hospital. Unlike in blogging where authors can easily go on hiatus, doctors, medical students and nurses take time in their work schedule to input their observations, suggestions, orders and instructions to other members of the healthcare delivery team. Continue Reading »

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After two weeks under the Departments of Neurosciences and Psychiatry, Block IV-A is now back at the Department of Internal Medicine for the homestretch of the what is by reputation, the toughest rotation in clerkship. Ironically, the Medical Intensive Care Unit has traditionally been one of the most benign (i.e. non-toxic) rotations. The manpower usually exceeds the number of patients on board so each patient would have at least two students working in tandem to fulfill laboratory and clerical requirments.

The call room is not bad as well. We share it with the five interns, but it’s definitely large enough to accomodate everyone.

 Yes, medicine has engulfed my life and I’m now reduced to blogging about these things. LOL. Continue Reading »

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