A doctor was forced to treat a Covid-19 patient in his car outside an overcrowded hospital in the Philippines.
Dr Jamie Amposta was assigned to the emergency room when a pensioner with low oxygen levels arrived and asked to be admitted in Cavite province on April 3.
The medic saw that the old man’s condition was critical so she thought of a way to assist him despite the hospital being on full capacity with no spare beds.
Dr Amposta asked nurses to take out an oxygen tank and created a DIY IV stand before fixing a makeshift ward inside the pensioner’s car in the parking lot.
She carried out laboratory tests and treatment until the old man’s condition had stabilised. He was transferred to an isolation tent as soon as there was a vacancy.
The doctor said she knew the set up was not ideal but it was the best they could do with the growing number of coronavirus patients in the country.
She said: ‘I never thought something like this can happen in my lifetime. I know this is not ideal at all but this is the best we can do for our ailing patients.’
Dr Jamie added that aside from health workers being shorthanded, medical supplies have been running out quickly.
She said: ‘Our nurses are also short staffed. We ran out of IV stands so I had to create one using poles and medical tapes just so we could bring it outside. Let’s look out for each other.’
Data from the Department of Health shows that almost a third of the hospitals in the country’s capital region Metro Manila had reached critical level in terms of Covid-19 bed occupancy while hospitals in provinces near its borders such as Cavite are nearing full capacity as well.
Despite imposing the longest ongoing lockdown in the world, the Philippines has recorded one of the worst Covid-19 surges in Southeast Asia with 803,000 cases and 13,435 deaths as of April 7.