An Act Establishing a Level I General Hospital in the Municipality of Tabuan-Lasa, Province of Basilan, and Appropriating Funds Therefor

This establishes a Level I general hospital with 25 beds in Tabuan-Lasa, Basilan — a municipality made up of islands lying off the island of Basilan itself.

The operative text is the template the author used across the programme, and 2 of its features matter. The hospital sits under the direct administrative and technical supervision of the province's Integrated Provincial Health Office, not the regional ministry — the ministry writes the operating guidelines and must ensure funding for the building, the complementary infrastructure, the facilities and medical equipment, and the maintenance and personnel costs. And growth runs through an annual development plan filed by the Chief of Hospital with the provincial health office, which sets the medical personnel, capital outlays and budget for the year; any future increase in bed capacity or upgrade of services must be consistent with it. When 2 bills on this template were enacted, Parliament reversed the first feature — BAA 78 and BAA 79 put the hospital under the regional ministry with a later, assessed transfer to the province — and kept the second.

The note opens with the provincial picture, and it is stark: the whole of Basilan has 6 hospitals, 4 of them in Isabela City and 2 in Lamitan City. Every other municipality in the province has only barangay health centres attempting to provide basic services.

Tabuan-Lasa is one of those municipalities. It is a coastal area outside the island of Basilan, created by Muslim Mindanao Autonomy Act No. 187 and ratified on 29 March 2008, with a population of 29,327 at the 2020 census. Since its creation it has had only a few barangay health centres.

The consequence is stated plainly. Critical cases require transporting the patient to the nearest hospital by boat, and the note says this "often results in the loss of lives because of delays in diagnosis and treatment of urgent care patients".

The provincial arithmetic is the argument, and it is worth stating on its own: 6 hospitals for the whole of Basilan, and all 6 in the 2 cities. Every other municipality — including this one, of nearly 30,000 people — has barangay health centres and nothing else. That is not a gap in coverage so much as an absence of it, and it explains why the same author filed 5 separate bills for 5 Basilan municipalities rather than 1 measure for the province.

Tabuan-Lasa's particular difficulty is that it is not on Basilan. A municipality composed of islands off an island province means the "nearest hospital" is reachable only by boat in any weather, and the note's sentence about lives lost to delays in diagnosis and treatment is the plainest statement of consequence in the whole programme. Twenty-five beds on the islands themselves is a different service from 25 beds an hour's crossing away.

The municipality's youth is the quiet context. Created in 2008 and ratified by plebiscite, Tabuan-Lasa has existed for less than 2 decades and has never had a hospital — which is a reminder that creating a local government unit, as this registry does repeatedly, does not by itself bring the facilities a population needs. The Special Geographic Area municipalities created in 2023 are in the same position.

This is 1 of 7 hospital bills MP Mawallil filed for the island provinces. Five establish new Level I hospitals — Sitangkai in Tawi-Tawi, and Tabuan-Lasa, Hadji Muhammad Ajul, Hadji Muhtamad and Lantawan in Basilan — and 2 upgrade existing ones, the Datu Halun Sakilan Memorial Hospital in Bongao and the Lamitan District Hospital, both to Level II. Two further bills on the same template, for Tipo-Tipo and Maluso, were enacted as BAA 78 and BAA 79 in 2025. The other 7 are still at Second Reading, Committee Stage.