‘I’d be happy to plant my share, and I am sure many other alumni will be happy to do the same. But to stop a project like this dead in its tracts for 50 years now because of trees?’
THE term of office of Atty. Danilo L. Concepcion as president of the University of the Philippines will be ending soon. And he will be stepping down, apparently, without having been able to take even the first step towards achieving the dream of having a Philippine General Hospital erected in Diliman.
I wrote about this when DLC had just been installed as president because he had said that one of his dreams during his term was to see this project started, if not finished. I latched on to this because, as a son of UP professors of medicine and nursing, I grew up in the 1970s hearing my parents excitedly talk about the plan.
The 1970s, mind you.
At that time, the only hospital in the Diliman corner of the woods was the Veterans Memorial Medical Center. The East Avenue Medical Center (initially the Bagong Lipunan Hospital), the Heart Center, the Lung Center, the Kidney Center, the Childrens’ Medical Center — all of these were not even in the figment of Imelda Marcos’ imagination yet.
On campus, we only had the Infirmary (“Infirmatay” to the always-complaining Iskos and Iskas!)
And now even FEU already has a teaching hospital in the area!
The idea of a PGH in Diliman became even more compelling to me when at the height of the COVID surge we were running out of hospital beds for patients in serious or critical conditions (like me). Imagine that? Imagine what an additional 200 or even 500 beds would have meant to those who had no choice but to die at home or in parking lots?
But why has this 1970s dream remained a dream till today?
Trees, I am told. Apparently, the proposed site is in the so-called UP Arboretum, home to tall and regal trees that are decades old. But why should that be an issue?
In the mining industry, there is a 2012 DENR department administrative order that mandates the planting of 100 trees for every one tree that mining companies displace. One for one hundred. Couldn’t the same be applied to this project? I’d be happy to plant my share, and I am sure many other alumni will be happy to do the same. But to stop a project like this dead in its tracts for 50 years now because of trees?
When I first heard DLC mention the plan to finally lay the cornerstone for PGH Diliman I vowed to myself that I would attend, even uninvited, on behalf of my father and mother who would have been so happy to see this happen. Now, I am no longer sure that I will get to see this myself.
But I swear on my parents’ grave that should this finally happen after I am dead then my three dogs would attend on our behalf — my father and mother and I.
Because it is a project whose time has long been overdue.
Stumped by trees.
