Early Christmas morning, streets are empty of the previous night's traffic gridlock. The "tambourine brigade" is also missing. These scrawny kids belt off- key carols and whack flattened bottle caps to cadge a peso or two. Thus, the wife and I reach the public hospital in no time.

Wreaths and star lanterns deck the peeling-paint on its walls. Step into "Pediatrics." Here, a starkly different world opens up.

The ward has 21 battered beds. They're crammed with 39 kids. Their match-stick limbs and emaciated features scream of chronic hunger. Out of every 10 infants, 6 have debilitating anemia, the last National Nutrition Survey found. Most are stunted. Seeing a wizened 4-year old patient, the wife murmurs: "Kathie is taller." Kathie is our 2-year old grand daughter.

Patients and sleepless parents, squeezed between beds, underscore a harsh fact: fund-short, over-crowded public hospitals stud this country. The hospital, in Pintuyan, Southern Leyte, for example, had one doctor: the chief. There were no nurses, lab technicians, medicine. Nada. Yet, these hospitals are lifelines for the poorest. Patients limp in from dengue-infested slums where clean water, unlike shabu, is short. Many trek in from hunger-strapped barangays.

"The proportion of Filipinos, dying without medical attention, has risen to 70 percent - a figure not seen in the country since the mid-1970s," a Washington Post report notes.

"A health care brain drain is strangling (public) hospitals across the Philippines."
The continuing exodus of health care personnel aggravates the fund crunch. Out of every 100 Filipino doctors, 68 practice abroad. Over 164,000 nurses left over the last four decades. And 8 out of 10 public health doctors are training to be nurses --- the first step towards a working visa. "

Christmas 2007, we found half of Bed 19 occupied by a skin-and-bones infant, attached to an IV tube. This Christmas, Bed 19 still had two kids: one with kidney problems, the other, gastroenteritis. The parents, this year, were broke too. They grip creased medicine prescription slips. But the hospital pharmacy is perennially short of drugs.

Last Christmas, a 4-year old boy curled fetal position on the other half of Bed 8. He hadn't had a single shot of needed antibiotics, the distraught father explained. He was a jobless laborer. This Chirstmas, a six year old girl lay on that half of Bed 8. She suffers from convulsions, the mother explains. The girl weakly reaches to kiss my hand in the traditional Filipino "mano po."

In the "ovarian lottery", these Pediatric ward kids are losers.

Children of the better-off, in contrast, take for granted: three square meals, clean water, a roof, schools, etc. They are vaccinated against TB, measles, etc. Orthodontists squeeze in "tin-grin" braces.

We make it to "Obstetrics" ward this Christmas. It's less crowded.

Patients chat with the resigned cheerfulness of lifetimes locked into penury. But Filipinas suffer Asia's highest death rates at child birth.

Daily, 11 women die, the National Statistical Office reports. A stunning 7 deaths occur at child birth or within a day after delivery. Complications and widespread infections are major causes. . In rural areas, 8 out of 10 infants are delivered outside a health facility "Our maternal mortality ratio is double that of Vietnam." Senator Edgardo Angara notes.

It triples that of Malaysia and China. Decline in mother deaths has been far too slow.

"It's unlikely we'll meet Millennium Development Goal target number 6, namely: to slash, by a third, the deaths of mothers come 2015.

These are preventable deaths "Giving birth should be about giving life, not giving up a life, says the Unicef. The "lack of funds" official excuse does not wash. Far too much is stolen. Sub-standard fertilizer takes priority over antibiotics. Local officials allocate bonuses for themselves, instead of funding nutrition, immunization, clean water, etc...

"There is enough for man's needs," Mahatma Gandhi taught. "But there is never enough for his greed."

Individuals with stunning wealth have the capacity to relieve grinding misery "If you know how rich you are, you're not rich," Imelda Marcos once boasted. "But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are." Do they?

Self-effacing millionaires, like the late Oscar Ledesma, did. But they're the exception.

Filipinos never developed the philanthropic traditions of Rockefellers, Mellons, and lately Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Sad but true. Most of those who help the sick, aside from religious groups, are men and women of modest means.

Distorted priorities cause food, medicine, even human warmth, to run short. Still, "trend is not destiny". These can be corrected. .It starts with seeing. "The only really blind person on Christmas day is he who does not have Christmas in his heart." the blind teacher Helen Keller once said.

Like Herod and his court, our officials and elite saw the star. And like Herod, they dismissed it. But following the star, the Magi found the Child, .Matthew tells us. They offered "gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh"-- the bitter aromatic balm from Yemen, used to anoint kings. It symbolizes pain.

But our hospitals, on Christmas morning, show that thieves grabbed the gold. Politicians waft frankincense in their own honor. But in Pediatric and OB wards, there's bitter myrrh to spare.

(E-mail: juan_mercado@boholchronicle.com)