DAVAO CITY—A high-ranking official of the Department of Health (DOH) confirmed the onset of depression and other mental-health problems among evacuees from Marawi City and surrounding towns of Lanao del Sur, indicating why new programs on assistance have already included stress debriefing for adults and responders.
Dr. Abdullah Dumama, assistant health secretary for Mindanao, told government-ran Radyo Pilipinas on Tuesday that “some IDPs [internally displaced persons, or evacuees] have indicated problems with their mental health.”
He quickly qualified that “they are not insane. They are suffering from some sort of depression.”
“That is why we are giving our responders and health personnel with MHPS, or mental health psychosocial service,” he said, as he disclosed the increasing level of mental disturbance obtaining in the cramped evacuation centers.
He said medical and psychiatric debriefings have been designed for different age levels. “We have various approaches on giving stress debriefing. Some age levels may need a different level of stress debriefing, or another age group may also require another level of debriefing.”
The government’s National Mental Health Center in Mandaluyong has already sent experts and psychiatrists to the evacuation centers, now reduced to 76 after some evacuees were allowed to return home in fully recovered and secured towns in Lanao del Sur.
While fighting centered in Marawi City, some towns were deliberately abandoned in the first phase of the fighting in May and of June as soldiers pushed armed followers of the Islamic State-linked Maute Group away from Marawi City.
“From 86 evacuation centers in Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte, the number has dwindled to 76,” Dumama said.
Aside from the noticeable onset of depression, health personnel reported an increase in upper-respiratory ailments and skin diseases.They said 46 evacuees have died of complications, including pneumonia and bronchitis.
“These patients did not die in the evacuation centers, but were rushed to the hospitals, where they were still able to receive first-aid treatments,” he said. “Our secretary has instructed us to refrain from having the diseases spread inside the evacuation centers because this may pose a threat of contamination.”
In September the DOH plans to divide the regions in Mindanao according to the proximity of their location to the center of the conflict in Marawi City and Lanao del Sur.
Dumama said the DOH medical personnel from the Davao region (comprising of the four Davao provinces and Compostela Valley); Caraga region (the two Agusan provinces, two Surigao provinces and Dinagat Island); and Region 10 (Northern Mindanao, to include Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon and Lanao del Norte) would be assigned to the evacuation centers and homes in Iligan City, Marawi City and the two Lanao provinces.
Region 12 (comprising of the Cotabato provinces of Sarangani, North and South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Cotabato City) and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (comprising of the provinces of Maguidanao and Lanao del Sur) would cater to the evacuation centers and homes south of Marawi City.
“It’s the back of Marawi City in Tamparan town passing through Parang in Maguindanao and Malabang in Lanao del Sur,” he said.
Dumama said some evacuees seek treatment in the hospitals south of Lanao del Sur and in Maguindanao “where our teams [from Davao City, Butuan City and Cagayan de Oro City] could not reach them.”
“We are sending the doctors from Region 12 and the ARMM to go to these hospitals to render medical care,” he added.
There are more than 400,000 evacuees still spread in the two Lanao provinces and other parts of Mindanao.
“There are evacuees in Davao City. The City Health Office has already asked us for assistance,” Dumama said. “This is really needed because these evacuees are poor and have no money. They have sought temporary shelter at the homes of their relatives who are also very poor,” he added.
The DOH already spent more than P100 million, including those allotted to the regional offices, to respond to the crisis in Marawi City, mainly for medicine and medical supplies.