mark-and-nurse-in-allen-samar
He fell from a bicycle in their village in Kaguitnaman. When I took this picture of him while he was being attended to by a nurse at the Allen (Samar) District Hospital on December 9, 2011, two-year old Mark Anton was, according to the resident doctor, already in a state of comatose for five days. He needed a CT scan. But his family did not have the money and the hospital don’t have the facility. I saw Mark again in the afternoon of the same day in the emergency room of Samar Provincial Hospital in Catarman, about 40 kilometers from Allen. His mom Mary Ann was being given an instruction that Mark has to be transferred to Tacloban City, about 250 kilometers away, where CT scan facilities are available.
Two days later, Mark’s father’s reply to my how-are-you-po text message was: “Wala na po si Mark. Iniuwi nalang po namin siya kasi wala na po talaga kaming pera.” (Mark already passed away. We brought him home because we really don’t have money). And then another text message, from Mark’s Mom, was: “Can we borrow P2,000 pesos from you, Sir? We have to buy a coffin for Mark.”
Note: The photograph is part of a documentary project the Asian Development Bank has asked me to do in relation to the Partners for Health Program.
