An Act Creating an Infirmary Hospital in Bongo Island, Parang, Maguindanao Del Norte, Defining Its Service Capacity, Providing Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes

This creates an infirmary hospital on Bongo Island, in Parang, Maguindanao del Norte, defining its service capacity — a 10-bed facility for an island that has none.

Bongo Island is 8 barangays under the jurisdiction of Parang, holding about 4,000 people, which the note puts at 3.89% of the municipality's population. The island lies 19.9 kilometers from the mainland, and the nearest hospital is 24 kilometers away.

The note makes the case through 2 outbreaks and a boat.

Patients are transported by boat, which is subject to weather. That poses a risk to the patient's safety, determines whether transport is possible at all, and carries its own costs in fuel, fees and maintenance.

Then the events. In 2013 Bongo Island suffered a cholera outbreak in which 2 residents died — an elderly woman and a 3-year-old child — and 64 residents were infected. In 2020 it happened again: 2 children died of diarrhoea and 42 more people were suspected cholera cases. The note's conclusion is that the absence of a hospital added to those outcomes, and that an infirmary would mean reduced morbidity, lower mortality and savings in medical expenses.

The 2 outbreaks are what make this the best-evidenced small hospital bill in the registry. Most measures here argue from distance and assert that lives are lost; this one names 2 specific events, 7 years apart, with the deaths counted and the ages given — an elderly woman and a 3-year-old in 2013, 2 children in 2020 — and 106 people infected or suspected between them. That is a documented pattern of a waterborne disease recurring on an island with no facility, which is a different order of argument from a travel time.

It also explains why an infirmary rather than a hospital is the right ask. Cholera and severe diarrhoeal disease kill through dehydration, and the intervention that saves a life is rehydration started early — something a 10-bed infirmary with fluids and trained staff can do and a boat cannot. The bill is sized to the thing that has actually been killing people there, which is a more disciplined piece of drafting than a larger facility would have been.

The population figure cuts the other way and the bill does not address it. Four thousand people is well below the threshold at which any bed-ratio standard would justify a facility — on the Department of Health's 1-per-1,000 measure used elsewhere in this registry, Bongo Island warrants 4 beds, not 10. The answer is that the ratio assumes patients can reach a hospital and the whole point here is that they cannot, but the bill leaves that argument implicit where the Ambolodto measures would have made it explicit.

One OCR note for anyone checking the filed copy: the title as scanned reads "PAKANG" where the municipality is Parang.