TWO GENERATIONS OF QUALITY CARE
Combining the tried and tested with the fresh and exciting in Philippine medicine
Newspapers, television reports, and lunch-time chatter are full of stories of Filipino health-care professionals driven by economic necessity to seek greener pastures abroad. While the problem of doctors and nurses leaving the country is a genuine concern, sometimes not enough recognition is given to those who choose to stay, and despite the many challenges, ultimately succeed.
Many of those doctors who practice in the Philippines have themselves experienced what it's like to work abroad, but their desire to serve their fellow Filipinos often far outweighs the necessity for a first-world-caliber career. What they have done, instead, is work hard to improve not only the practice of medicine in the country, but ultimately to improve the health of Filipinos.
And whether one is a "tried and tested" veteran or a "fresh and exciting" young gun, it doesn't really matter, as long as service is what drives him or her to go on working. Here are two generations of Filipino medical practitioners to whom the practice of medicine is all about making a positive change in the lives of others.
Photos by Boaner Medina
Graphics by Gerald Escarlan
He who shook the tree of life
Conrado Dayrit, MD (1919-2007)
Grace Roxas, Contributing Writer
"We all thought he would live to be 100," says one contemporary about the late Dr. Conrado Dayrit. And the doctor would have sent a strong message indeed to the naysayers of the health virtues of coconut oil, the much-debated local elixir for which he went all out in defending and promoting for more than four decades.
As a cardiologist, Dayrit brought solid professional cachet into the task of championing a substance that has had its fair share of detractors as being insalubrious to the very organ he specializes in. Starting his career right after World War II, he was part of the team that performed the first heart surgery in the Philippines, was honored for his work on digitalis for heart patients, and was a founding member of the Philippine Heart Association.
Also weighing in was his expertise in the field of pharmacology-for which he was also formally trained in the US-and hefty institutional presence in the field of general scientific research. He was the first president of the Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology, medical-affairs head for United Laboratories (Unilab), and led the country's highest science and technology advisory body (the National Academy of Science and Technology), as well as the Federation of Asian Scientific Academies and Societies.
"It was only because of his stature as one of the country's leading physicians that his editorials and articles were published in Philippine medical journals," observes fellow coconut-oil advocate and long-time friend Dr. Bruce Fife. "Opposition to coconut oil was so intense that American and European journals wouldn't dare publish them. Consequently, his voice had a limited audience, but he never gave up."
Dr. Toby Dayrit, the doctor's third son and current dean of the Ateneo de Manila University College of Science and Engineering, defines the essence of his father's achievement as the latter's constant quest to go beyond the status quo in medical lore.
"He had a good understanding of how medicine works," says the younger Dayrit. "He didn't just follow what is the standard and this is where he differed from other doctors."
Gentle maverick
With his well-known affable ways, the elder Dayrit seemed more than capable of smoothing the edges off his maverick tendencies. The stories go all the way back to 1945 when as a young intern playing his beloved violin in a hospital in the midst of the wartime tension, Dayrit eased the cares of not a few patients who were sick of more than just bodily ills.
Fellow cardiologist Ramon Abarquez credits his older colleague not only for helping him toward his most important achievements to date-a cultural heritage award for creating the exercise electrocardiogram-but for being a model of equanimity amidst distress to the distraught younger doctor during a particularly trying phase of the project.
Such manner of leading by doing is also how he molded a brood of eight children who are now achievers in their own rights. Two became doctors. Eldest child Manuel is a former secretary of the Department of Health, while the youngest is a US-based pulmonologist. Toby (who holds a PhD in Chemistry) remembers a father liberal with his expectations and fair with his filial dealings.
Abarquez also remembers Dayrit's more irrepressible, social side. "He liked to talk. When he presents a paper or a lecture, he would usually go beyond the allotted time. And his knowledge goes beyond medicine," he recalls.
In his latter years, Dayrit was also known to preface, with a musical piece or two, lectures that can encompass not only matters of pure science but the archaeology and history of the Holy Land.
"You could rely on Ading as a friend," recalls Dr. Solita Camara-Besa, who became Dayrit's colleague at the UP College of Medicine, neighbor in Malate, Manila, and family friend for more than 60 years. She recounts an incident after the war when Ading went to the immediate aid of a friend who suffered a terrible stroke even if it was close to midnight.
This basic commitment to his profession as a healer never deserted Dayrit, despite the growing demands of duties that took him out of the clinic. He was still seeing patients three times a week at the Victor R. Potenciano Medical Center until the time of his last hospital confinement.
Toby ventures that over the last 10 to 15 years, most of these consultations were provided free of charge as his father's patients were mostly friends and relatives. True retirement for Dayrit was also an elusive luxury, as he remained in-demand as a speaker, aside from being active with many organizations, advocating coconut oil and writing.
A man with more than 250 scientific papers to his name, Dayrit was able to do more mainstream writing after his official retirement (one of three) from Unilab. Camara-Besa cites as landmark his joint authorship of The History of Philippine Medicine with Drs. Perla Santos Ocampo and Eduardo de la Cruz in 2004. Another major output, The Truth about Coconut Oil, was published the year after.
He was at work on a book about alternative and complementary medicine with two coauthors when the final chapter on his own life closed. "One of his realizations was that, drugs are just one aspect of health," his son says. "Unfortunately, the drug aspect of health has been overemphasized. There are actually many facets of health that are not given attention, and a lot of these are mind-body interactions."
Toby Dayrit says they plan to move forward with the elder Dayrit's lifelong advocacy of the coconut oil by setting up a foundation that will catalyze and guide further research on its use. A major initiative planned is an online resource center providing scientific information.
He adds that in looking for key people who may sit on the board, the qualifications are pretty straightforward: "These are people who have the same characteristics as he had, a doctor and a free thinker with abundant people skills."
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My leader, my gastroenterologist
Martin Bautista, MD
Sunly Coo, Contributing Writer
"Some people think I'm crazy," Dr. Martin Bautista says a matter-of-factly. Why, they wonder, would a gastroenterologist who has a thriving medical practice in America, an equally successful pulmonologist wife by his side, and four young children, choose to bring his entire family back to the Philippines and enter the dirty waters of local politics?
The former senatorial candidate categorically states that it isn't about the money. "I am financially independent. My wife and I own a clinic in Oklahoma, Specialty Clinics of St. Anne, which sees about 130 patients a day. We're lucky because we're making a lot of good money from it," he says.
The couple also cofounded a private school, the Good Shepherd Montessori Academy, which has been operating since 1999. But last year, he continues, "we felt that it was time for us to teach our children that it wasn't all about making money or the number of cars in your garage. It's all about teaching them the concept of social conscience."
It was also time for him to fulfill the promise he made before he left for America: to give back what he could to his mother land. This time, not just as a doctor. After witnessing a speech delivered by former U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton on health reforms at the American Medical Association, he realized that a political figure can effect greater changes and on a wider magnitude than a physician. So began Bautista's mammoth-some argue, impossible-public campaign to eliminate the
trapo and basically reinvent the political machinery as we know it.
"We have to stop the dynastic mentality. I thought they say we are overpopulated in this country, so why do we have to resort to Pimentels all the time, Macapagals, Arroyos, Rectos, Osmeñas?" he passionately asks. "If you and I will continue to rely on traditional politicians to deliver our country from poverty, suffering, and hunger, we are being delusion. I don't expect Escudero, Legarda, Lacson, to offer me anything substantial and new. I don't expect President Arroyo to give me a new economic policy that will save our people from the disaster that you and I know we are heading."
But with zero experience in public office, Bautista is a newbie, a fingerling swimming against the tide in a territory dominated by unscrupulous, power-hungry sharks. Cynics predict, he will be eaten alive or eventually become one of the traditional politicians he so despises.
Undaunted by criticisms, he threw his hat into the senate race in the last election. "I'm not as arrogant to think that I will not become corrupt like others," he says, which was why he would rather start high up on the political totem pole and sit for only one term. Virtually an unknown running under
Ang Kapatiran-an "idealistic, quixotic group of Christian men and women" bent on changing the system-Bautista nonetheless captured a respectable "758,000 votes without spending a single cent on TV and radio ads." He didn't expect to win; he just wanted to get his message across.
Expect to hear him bang the same drums as he hits the campaign trail again soon. The position? He'll only disclose it off-the-record for now. But his platform is no secret: investing more in health and education at 20 percent and six percent of the national budget.
"We treat health care as an expenditure, which is why we put 1.1 percent of the budget to health care, while America puts 21.3 percent," he says. Once he wins, he will repeal the automatic appropriations act to scale down debt payment; abolish the army-"We don't have external threats; everything is internal"-and limit the force to constabulary; and encourage half of the overseas Filipino workers to return to the country-"You go abroad, you learn, you earn, but to complete the brain-gain cycle you have to come back."
"We have very good, very gifted people," he says. "All we need is a conductor who will inspire these people to become productive, not cynical." And the best person for the job might just be a doctor.
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