Bangsamoro MP member's eye care services proceed amid Ramadhan
HEALTH • 15:00 PM Thu Mar 23, 2023
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By:
John M. Unson
Doctor Kadil Sinolinding, Jr. checks an eye patient while in Sulu province last week. (From Kenneth Pilas)
COTABATO CITY - The doctor in the Bangsamoro parliament assured Thursday to continue with his medical outreach projects for the poor during the Islamic Ramadhan season that started Thursday.
Residents in Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte and in the 63 barangays in different towns in Cotabato province under the Bangsamoro government had told reporters they are apprehensive that their appointments with eye specialist Kadil Sinolinding, Jr. could be stalled, meantime, due to the Ramadhan season.
“Our medical outreach missions will continue even if we are observing the Ramadhan,” Sinolinding, a member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, said Thursday.
Muslims abstain from food and drinks at daytime, as a religious obligation, during the month of Ramadhan, for them a holy month where they also focus on reparation for wrongdoings.
Sinolinding, most known as the “doctor sa parliamento,” started as health officer in the towns of Pagalungan and Montawal in Maguindanao del Sur and had served as regional health secretary of the now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, replaced in 2019 with a more politically empowered Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Sinolinding, appointed by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. as member of the BARMM parliament in August 2022, and his staff had treated almost 300 poor eye patients from Luuk, Jolo and Panglima Estino towns in Sulu last week.
The outreach mission in Jolo, Sulu was jointly facilitated by Sinolinding and two other members of the BARMM parliament, Adzdar Usman and Matarul Estino.
The two Tausug parliament members were the main proponents and benefactors of the activity.
Records provided by Usman and Estino showed that a total of 99 patients, 66 of them from different barangays in Jolo and the rest from Luuk, underwent caratact surgery during the three-day outreach medical mission.
Sinolinding had also done pterygium operation for 49 other eye patients from Jolo and Luuk.
Sinolinding said a total of 145 patients underwent eye operations during their medical missions in the Sulu Provincial Hospital in Jolo and in the Luuk District Hospital in the town proper of Luuk.
Sinolinding said he is thankful to the management of both hospitals in Sulu and to BARMM’s health minister, the physician Rizaldy Piang, for supporting their activity in the island province.
In separate statements Thursday, Usman and Estino expressed gratitude for the non-government Doctor Shahid Deseret Ambulatory Referral DeAR Center Foundation for helping push their outreach mission forward.
The foundation, involved in charitable works benefiting poor eye patients, was established together by Sinolinding and benefactors in the country and abroad.