89 eye patients in BARMM barangay treated 

COTABATO CITY - A team from the office of a physician in the 80-member Bangsamoro parliament and volunteers from a non-profit medical foundation treated 89 marginalized eye patients during an outreach mission in Barangay Ulandang in Midsayap, North Cotabato on Tuesday.

Barangay Ulandang is one of 13 barangays in Midsayap that are under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao but is inside a municipality of Cotabato province inside the territory of Administrative Region 12.

Midsayap Mayor Rolly Sacdalan said on Wednesday that he is thankful to the Deseret Ambulatory Referral Center Foundation based in Kabacan, North Cotabato and to the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Sinolinding, Jr., who is a member of the interim BARMM parliament, for having treated 89 residents of Ulandang with eye problems last Tuesday.

“Ulandang is no longer under my administration after it became part of BARMM via a plebiscite in 2019 but I am still a `father’ to the Moro residents there because their barangay is in Midsayap, which is under my leadership,” Sacdalan told reporters on Wednesday.

Abdul Tayan Sandigan, chairman of Barangay Ulandang, said the team from Sinolinding’s office and volunteers from the Deseret Foundation had examined and provided initial treatment for his 89 constituents with eye problems, 30 of them now slated for cataract surgeries.

“Parliament member Sinolinding will personally do the surgical procedures,” Sandigan said.

The eye care team of Sinolinding, most known by the moniker “doctor in the parliament,” had treated more than 3,000 poor patients in different towns in North Cotabato and BARMM’s Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur and Lanao del Sur since he was appointed as a member of the regional law-making body in August 2002 by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.