The Peripatetic Pathology of the Body Politic: An Ambulance Odyssey Through the Archipelago’s Spectral Hospitals
The Peripatetic Pathology of the Body Politic: An Ambulance Odyssey Through the Archipelago’s Spectral Hospitals Curatorial Frame In the humid interstices of Philippine public discourse, where rumor and institutional theater interpenetrate, a brief, almost throwaway utterance surfaces like a fever dream transcribed by an exhausted relative: “Concerned ako kay Dating Speaker; sana makapag patingin sya ng maayos sa mga specialista.” What follows is not a medical itinerary but a cartographic delirium—an itinerary that begins at the Philippine General Hospital, proceeds through the Philippine Heart Center, the National Orthopedic Hospital, the Lung Center, a psychiatric ward, the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, San Lazaro Hospital (for the ritual exclusion of rabies and dengue), the GSIS Hospital (under the fiscal embrace of the state), then by ambulance across the Matnog Ferry to Leyte Provincial Hospital so that the patient may “makipagkita sa mga kababayan,” onward to Ilocos N...