A FILIPINO-AMERICAN doctor donated last Saturday a high-technology equipment called bronchoscope, costing half a million pesos, to the Region 1 Medical Center here.

Dr. Pedro Dayrit, a gastroenterologist, who works at the Memorial Hospital in Salem County, New Jersey and at the St. Francis Hospital in Delaware, handed over the modern medical equipment to R1MC officials led by Dr. Jesus T. Canto, hospital director.

Dayrit is married to Dr. Elmina Margarita Fernandez, a neurologist, daughter of Immigration Commissioner and Mrs. Alipio Fernandez of Dagupan City. The couple are both U.S.- based.

Canto, director of the Region 1 Medical Center, said it was Dagupan City Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez, brother-in-law of Dayrit, who chose the Region I Medical Center to be a recipient of the bronchoscope.

Canto said Dayrit’s donation is a big boon to indigent patients with pulmonary problem since not anybody can afford the cost of medical service requiring the use of a bronchoscope.

Bronchoscope, said Canto, is a medical instrument that appears only for the rich and famous because of the cost that one pays if he or she goes through this instrument, but this time, even the indigents can undergo pulmonary examination using the newly donated equipment.

Canto said because it was a donation from a good Samaritan Fil-Am doctor, patients who will be subjected to pulmonary examination using the equipment will not be charged anything, except a few incidental expenses.

He said with the donation, Region I becomes only the second hospital in Pangasinan, it not in the entire Ilocos region, with a bronchoscope.

Dayrit said the bronchoscope is a fiber optics instrument that will take a look inside the respiratory tract of a patient, especially if he or she is coughing up blood.

This can be done, he said, by inserting the telescope into the nose to enable anyone to see all the way to the lungs.

Aside from being used for diagnostic purposes, he said, the instrument can help bring out secretion from the lungs through suction so that a patient can feel better. – (PNA)