Operation Smile to help raise funds for city hospital
TOUCHED by what he saw when visiting the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) yesterday morning, the founder of Operation Smile assured Mayor Michael Rama he would work “side by side” with the city government in raising P1.5 billion to build a new city hospital.
“You need to walk into the hospital to see that the people there are almost begging for help,” said Operation Smile founder and CEO Dr. William Magee as he narrated, teary eyed, the pitiful condition of CCMC patients.
Magee said that he and Operation Smile’s top officials will do their “very best to stand side by side with you to help raise the money you need.”
Rama visited Magee in Virginia, USA last month to solicit help for the hospital project.
“I didn’t know if I understood (what the mayor meant) until I walked into the hospital this morning,” Magee told reporters in the mayor’s conference room.
Magee visited CCMC with Michael Nebeker, Operation Smile senior vice president for Asia, and one of its governors, Cebu businesswoman Mariquita Salimbangon Yeung.
They called on Rama who just arrived from Singapore.
Magee and Nebeker arrived in Cebu on Wednesday night and left for Manila last night to welcome volunteer doctors arriving in the country for their “Mega Mission” to operate on children with cleft palates.
Taking care of the children of the world is their main mission, but Magee said they also try to help government hospitals from the financial support that they get from their donors.
Operation Smile earlier helped in the expansion and installation of modern equipment in a hospital it the State of Assam in Bangladesh. The CCMC would be their second beneficiary hospital.
“I’ll stick with you Mayor Mike. I will never abandon you. If we have to beg (to rebuild CCMC), we will do so,” said Yeung.
Nebeker said that fundraising should not be considered begging but an invitation for people to invest their money in something worthwhile.
Councilor Mary Ann delos Santos said that architect Miko Espina and his father, Dr. Shawn Espina, will complete the detailed and structural design of the proposed CCMC building by the June 16 deadline so that bidding of phase 1, worth P313 million, could start next month.
The city government allocated P300 million for the hospital project. The remaining P13 million was raised from donations.
Magee said that the 7.2 magnitude earthquake which hit Cebu on October 15, 2013 and damaged the CCMC building could be a blessing in disguise, a means to give the Cebuanos the best hospital they deserve.
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