Mission Possible: Making a Difference in Cebu City: Cebu City – the second largest city in the Philippines

Road Warriors:the team gathers
outside a coffee shop at the
Manila airport.

Following about four more hours at the Manila airport, where several members of the medical team started talking shop (see pictures), we finally caught our last flight to Cebu.

We’ve landed at our final destination…finally! What a wonderful greeting by the host Rotary club: Cebu Port Center. Such friendly and helpful people! With their help we didn’t handle our luggage, but rather were ushered to an air-conditioned bus after many greetings and some photos of the team. I finally got a picture of our full team!

The chapter president, Gilbert, served as our tour guide on the drive to the hotel from Mactan-Cebu International Airport. We learned several things about the island. Cebu (the island) is home to Cebu City, the country’s second largest metropolitan city after Manila with 4 million population (of the nation’s 80 million). Tourism is the largest industry due to the central location providing easy access to dozens of other islands with a variety of beaches, recreational opportunities, and cultural interests. The other leading industries are electronics and call centers. Apparently 20% of the country’s electronics exports are made right on this island. Call centers are also a growing economic base for the country according to Gilbert, who said that it’s created terrific opportunities and living wages for the educated population.

Waiting for the flight, medical director Frank (center)
talks shop with fellow surgeon Don and anesthesiologist Tim.

Gilbert (our host and tour guide)

As we drove through the city toward the hotel, we saw the port, which is the country’s second largest and 8km of shoreline, a couple of universities, and what appeared to be a rather poor area of town. We arrived at the hotel to find the local Rotarians had already arranged for our bags to be delivered straight to our rooms and the medical supply boxes to the hospital.

After checking in, we returned to a banquet room where they had a terrific welcome lunch prepared for us. It was fantastic to finally have a meal I wanted!

Then came the shock of my day. I had thought that the work would begin tomorrow. So imagine my surprise to find out we were leaving shortly for the hospital to check out our location and then to the pre-op clinic location (a Buddhist temple) to set-up. All sans shower. Yep…we all jumped right into the work.

Hungry travelers enjoy a terrific luncheon with our hosts

At the hospital we figured out where everything is and how we would set up for the surgery days. Parts of the hospital are open air and the facilities are nothing like anything I’ve ever seen. But at least the people do have some healthcare here. After that, a contingent of the group went to the temple and scoped out the location where tomorrow we will welcome more than 100 patients and their families to get their pre-screening and determine the priority surgeries for the days after.

Vincente Sotto Memorial Hospital -- where surgeries will be done
beginning Friday.

I quickly broke into my supply boxes and set to setting up my filing system and office space with the help of Steve and Dave. Given that we have a lot of people to process all of my files had to be prepared with forms partially completed with the record numbers so that I can get people into the system efficiently. I’m told tomorrow will be the hardest day for me. But, after finishing the file prep over beers with the team, I feel ready! We’ll see…I’m bound to have missed something!

P.S. Sorry for the delay in posts...between the lack of wi-fi in Manila and the surprise work today, I fell behind.

P.S.S. Thank you for your e-mails and comments. I really like reading the comments and I haven't yet figured out how to reply using this system.