ORMOC CITY — If plans go through, the Eastern Visayas State University, the biggest state university in the region will open a program for a College of Medicine for poor but deserving students who want to pursue a medical course.
EVSU president Dr. Dennis de Paz said the idea was first vouched five years ago in the administration of his predecessor but got stalled for different reasons such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
"There is a high demand for the program especially that many local government units in the region do not have sufficient doctors," he said.
EVSU has a total student population of over 22,000 students enrolled in its main campus in Tacloban City and in its satellite campuses in Ormoc City and the towns of Tanauan, Dulag, Burauen and Carigara.
The plan is to establish the school in Ormoc City. De Paz said the landed Larrazabal family donated a 5.4-hectares of property to the university which they can use to put up the college.
Professor Gerry de Cadiz, campus director of EVSU in Ormoc City, said he is now finalizing the feasibility study for the opening of the program.
De Cadiz said discussions with the medical community of Ormoc City especially with members of the local chapter of Philippine Medical Society showed a strong support for the plan.
He said Ormoc City has three hospitals and one of them is a Level 3 but it does not have a medical school. "Those who want to purse a medical degree go to Tacloban or Cebu City to study," he says.
De Cadiz said the city government of Ormoc is also supportive of the plan especially that it spends P50 million a year for a scholarship program for deserving students who want to study medicine.
If the plan pushes through, this will be the third medical school in Eastern Visayas. The biggest medical school in the region, the Remedios Trinidad Romualdez Medical Foundation is owned by the family of House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
The other medical school is the University of the Philippines School of Health Sciences, a school under UP Manila, which offers a "step-ladder" curriculum where each student starts with Community Health Worker, or Midwife then sequentially as Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and eventually as Doctor of Medicine. UP SHS has a present enrollment of 76 from first to fifth year.
De Paz said that aside from finalizing the feasibility study, the school has already started acquiring assets in preparation for its opening of a medical course.
On Friday, 11 November, the university formally received a donation of medical books from The Asia Foundation under its Books for Asia program.
