“One constant is the presence of Christ in our work,” Dr. Fe Sycip-Wale said in describing her 50-year career in public health spent serving rural communities in Negros Oriental.
Sycip-Wale was born in Cebu in 1935 to a Chinese mother, Tim Wa Lee, a doctor, and a Filipino Chinese father, Daniel Sycip, a businessman.
She wanted to pursue a degree in agriculture so she could help in the family farm, but her father wanted her to follow in her mother’s footsteps. After completing a bachelor’s degree at the University of the Philippines Diliman, she acquired her medical degree at the Far Eastern University. She went on to complete her residency in pediatrics in the United States and a postgraduate course in tropical public health in the United Kingdom. She joined the Silliman University Medical Center (SUMC) in 1967.
Marina Maternity Clinic
Daniel Sycip donated land in his birthplace, Dauin (some 14 kilometers from Dumaguete City), for a maternity clinic to be named after his mother, Marina Alabata. In 1972, SUMC’s Marina Maternity Clinic opened as an extension community clinic, with financial support from the Gottingen Reformed Church (Germany) and the United Presbyterian Church (United States).
Sycip-Wale oversaw the 12-bed hospital with a resident physician, a postgraduate intern, a full-time nurse, a midwife, a driver, and two janitors.
Marina Clinic and its team provided maternal and child healthcare for minimal fees: P10 for delivery and P3 for consultation. They advocated for health education and prevention, teaching patients and their companions about personal hygiene and nutrition, so illnesses could be prevented from developing and spreading at home.
Their services reached fishing and farming families not only in Dauin but also in Zamboanguita, Siaton and even Bayawan City (20, 40, and almost 100 km away, respectively). Within a year, more people were coming to the clinic to consult for other medical concerns because it was the most accessible to them.
Marina Clinic evolved from serving as a medical facility to bringing a multidisciplinary and people-based healthcare program to remote communities with a vision of sustainability.
Soon, Sycip-Wale was heading medical missions to far-flung barangays to respond to the needs of communities that were beyond the reach of the rural health unit.
“We first engaged with the rural health unit’s mothers’ club, which quickly evolved into the parents’ club, because fathers were also in the community during our meetings, and they would present their health and hygiene concerns,” she recalled.
The team encouraged individuals to eat a balanced diet and secure a safe water source, and encouraged community members to build sanitary toilets and use them.
The clinic also became a model area for households to grow organic food and herbal medicines.
Better public health
All these measures contributed to overall better public health.
The team brought immunization for infants and administered this on-site. They also started training “mananabang” or “hilot” (midwife/birth attendant) after observing a high incidence of tetanus cases among newborns.
Their medical extension services came to include providing training for volunteer barangay health workers with help from a rural health doctor. The volunteers gathered once a week over the course of eight months. It was a grueling schedule of travelling over bumpy, unpaved mountain roads, spending the night in the barangay, then returning to their duties at Marina Clinic the next day.
“It was difficult to reach those places,” Sycip-Wale said. To get to Barangay Mag-aso, for instance, the team took almost two hours traversing a road full of mud and potholes. “We had to travel slowly in the clinic’s pedicab,” she said, adding that at points marked by big and deep holes, they had to alight, walk beside their vehicle, then after some distance get into it again.
The team engaged with communities through an integrated approach to healthcare: with agriculture, food production, livelihood and better income opportunities, preschool programs, and others, depending on the needs of each community’s members. They brought agriculturists, nutritionists, and community development leaders to provide services and skills training, in the process empowering the rural folk in sustaining their endeavors.
They organized the communities in Mag-aso, Libjo, Panubtuban, Boloc-boloc, Bunga, Magsaysay, and Batuhon Dacu in Dauin. Consequently, each community built a small bamboo hut to serve as its clinic, not charging fees for the services. Some of them also established consumers’ cooperative stores. Today, rural health units operate in those areas.
Complementing cures
Community members, mostly composed of fishers and farmers—historically the poorest sectors in Philippine society—could not afford to buy medicines prescribed to them by the doctors and barangay health workers, or could not complete the required number of doses. Serendipitously, in the early 1980s, Sycip-Wale learned through a nongovernment organization about alternative medicine, particularly herbal medicine, acupuncture and moxibustion. She has since become a staunch advocate.
“Not all illnesses necessitate Western medicines,” she said. “Herbal preparations like a lagundi decoction coupled with hydrotherapy and lots of rest are good for treating viral influenza. These are much cheaper than Western therapies.”
It was not difficult to convince the rural folk to undergo acupuncture, it turned out, because insurgents—or members of the New People’s Army—who visited those areas had introduced them to its benefits, and administered the service for free.
“They made their own needles from guitar strings, sharpening the edges,” Sycip-Wale said.
In 2000, Sycip-Wale retired from full-time work as a physician. But she continued to work on several programs, managing projects for Marina Clinic and Silliman University’s Health Extension Program until 2017. By then, the Department of Health had recognized Marina Mission Clinic as a primary healthcare facility.
Under Sycip-Wale’s leadership, the Health Extension Program helped establish units of the government’s community primary care hospitals in the municipalities of Kalumboyan, Amio, Nabilog, Pacuan, Inapoy, Luz-Sikatuna, and Dawis.
Marina Mission Clinic also conducted training programs for barangay health workers in Iloilo, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, and North Cotabato.
Social phenomenon
Looking back, Sycip-Wale said: “We learned to recognize health as a social phenomenon: that many factors affect health—not just physical and biological factors. Others equally important, like economic, sociopolitical, cultural, and biological/environmental factors, must be considered.
“People came to understand that ill health is a byproduct of inequality and injustice. We put their health in their hands by not simply organizing free clinics, but by also organizing communities to help identify the real problems and find solutions to their health problems.”
Finally, “Most important is the transformation from a purely medical model into a health program concerned with social transformation,” she said.
Sycip-Wale has received accolades for her achievements, among them the Albert Schweitzer Award, Outstanding Oriental Negrense Award for Excellence, and Outstanding Sillimanian Award in Community Health Service.
Much has changed from when she spent many hours travelling long distances to listen to and respond to the many problems of those who live in remote communities. Now, they are more health-conscious, embracing preventive practices in their daily lives, using alternative medicines when appropriate, and, when ill, going to their nearest rural health unit for consultation.
Sycip-Wale finds fulfillment in knowing that she and her team contributed to that development.
“We empowered the communities to take care of themselves,” she said. “We encouraged them to do whatever they can in terms of prevention. Subsequently, they can now help themselves and others in the barangay.”
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