ABRA — In some areas of the Philippines, patients need to travel hours through vehicles, boat, or even by walking, just in order to visit the nearest rural health unit. It would take even longer for them to reach a hospital or a higher care facility equipped for more specialized services. The sad thing is a handful of these patients spend so much in travelling to a town hours away for services that could have been available at the RHU.
One of these patients is Lino, an old man who went to their RHU in Malibcong, Abra, with complaints of chest pain. With Malibcong being one of the volunteer sites of RxBox this year, their health workers used the ECG component of the RxBox on Lino. The result was normal. Lino was very grateful since he was reassured that he didn’t have any cardiac complications. He didn’t have to travel to Bangued, which is 5 hours away from Malibcong, which could have cost him 180 pesos for the transportation fare. Additionally, he didn’t have so spend 400 pesos for ECG services since their RHU’s RxBox provided immediate diagnosis for free.