JEDDAH, 9 May 2004 — The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in Manila has responded with remarkable swiftness by issuing plane tickets for not just three but five seats to repatriate Gelacio Pamandanan, the Filipino quadriplegic who had been stranded at the King Fahd General Hospital in Jeddah.
Three seats were for the 56-year-old native of Bulacan province to lie on and two tickets for the Jeddah-Manila return trip of the patient’s escort.
But the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Jeddah said yesterday that the tickets could not be used after all because the doctors attending to Pamandanan are saying the patient is medically unfit to travel, especially via commercial plane.
“The patient needs a medical evacuation — meaning a helicopter, a private plane or a flying hospital fully equipped with needed medical equipment for any eventuality that may occur during the flight,” Labor Attaché Nasser Munder, head of the POLO, quoted doctors as saying.
Hospital staff earlier said Pamandanan was suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome, or GBS, an illness which causes the motor nerves to stop functioning. The patient can barely move his eyes and he is kept alive with a breathing apparatus attached through his throat.
Pamandanan was supposed to be flown yesterday to Manila until the doctors said no. At King Fahd’s medical ward where the patient lies motionless, a Filipino medical staff could only sigh in prayer, “May God continue to give him strengths to survive.”
Meanwhile, welfare officer Titing Lim, who is also handling Pamandanan’s case, denied claims by Filipino medical workers at the hospital that that the OWWA office in Jeddah was not looking after the patient.
“We are always here to help in whatever way we can, especially that Pamandanan’s health continue to deteriorate,” Lim said.
Lim added that the POLO is also working out for any entitlement the worker can get from his sponsor.