Fil-American doctor keeps coming home to give back

Fil-American doctor keeps coming home to give back

First posted 02:31am (Mla time) Mar 18, 2006
By Christian V. Esguerra
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the March 18, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

FOR many, it was their first time to see a doctor.

They came in droves from all over Negros-some in bare feet-packing the gymnasium, the usual site of the medical mission, recalled Dr. Leo Gangoy, a family medicine specialist from Virginia and a graduate of the Southwestern University College of Medicine in Cebu.

In three days, Gangoy and his wife Carolina, a nurse, saw a whopping 3,000 patients in a small town in Negros last January. They ran out of supplies which they had brought from the United States and had to make local purchases.

Gangoy went to the United States long before his compatriots began flocking abroad to work as doctors, nurses and caregivers. But unlike many of them, this retired US Navy captain would return home with a team of Filipino and American doctors for a weeklong medical mission. He has been doing so for the past 20 years.

Every year since the 1980s, the medical mission would fly in and visit the poorest barangays in the country. It was the team's way of giving back the blessings they were given, Gangoy said.

"The poor people here cannot be compared elsewhere-they're really poor," he said in an interview with the Inquirer.

Through the years, Gangoy has witnessed the worsening health condition in the Philippines, especially in the wake of the massive exodus of doctors and nurses.

He sees no clear solution to the problem unless it comes from the government and the economy becomes stable enough to support decent income.

"It's very difficult because it has to start from the top," he said. "You've got to have a plan to solve this problem."

Make a wish

Gangoy and his wife came home two months ago for another reason.

Andy Ardan, a 14-year-old hemophiliac from San Pedro, Laguna, had long dreamed of owning a computer to help him with his high school education. His disease had kept him mostly at home.

Make A Wish, a foundation which grants wishes of children with life-threatening diseases, got wind of Andy's condition and linked him up with the retired Navy doctor through a Filipino businessman.

One donor provided the computer while Gangoy promised to get Ardan a health insurance so his parents wouldn't have to worry about his medical expenses.

Ardan would get hospitalized three times a year. His father, a market vendor, would raise P70,000 each time. Two siblings died of hemophilia, while hepatitis claimed a third one.

Hemophilia is one disease a poor family like the Ardans doesn't deserve. But it's a given and it's up to good Samaritans like Gangoy to try and make life easier for the family.

Two decades and counting

Gangoy's medical missions have endured for two decades now, largely through the help of other Filipino physicians based in the United States. They, too, left, but they did not forget their countrymen.

Gangoy is an official of the Philippine Medical Association of Southeastern Virginia, Association of Philippine Family Practice and the Association of Philippine Physicians in America-all involved in fund-raising activities to finance medical missions here.

Inspired by the long-distance bayanihan (cooperation), some American doctors also chip in, he said.

"We raise funds there so we could use them here [in the Philippines]," Gangoy said.

He said the humble amount of $3,000 (P150,000)-which probably wouldn't make a dent in a rich country like the United States-was considered a fortune in a small town in Iloilo, which his team once visited. The town had a small clinic visited by a doctor once a week.

Grateful patients

During missions, Gangoy and his group would face the same depressing scenario-people with tuberculosis, infections and cysts-easily treatable in the First World, but not in these parts.

There were also people who would troop to the mission centers, not to seek treatment, but to beg for food.

For Gangoy and his colleagues, who were used to First World conditions, the scenario was frustrating.

Often, he would be left with no choice but to prescribe a "shotgun" treatment. Simply put, a patient was given medication that would cover every problem in the body.

"It's frustrating but you have no choice," he lamented. "It's gratifying though because you're able to help. If only you could see the gratitude in their faces."