ANNUAL REPORT 2020 ANNUAL REPORT 2020 CONTENTS ANNUAL REPORT 1. PCS President’s Report 2. PCSF President’s Report 3. Chapters’ Reports • Cordillera Chapter • Northern Luzon Chapter • Central Luzon Chapter • Metro Manila Chapter • Southern Tagalog Chapter • Cebu Eastern Visayas Chapter • Northern Mindanao Chapter 4. Surgical Specialty Societies’ Reports • Philippine Urological Association • Philippine Association of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Aesthetic Surgery • Philippine Society of Pediatric Surgeons • Philippine Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons • Philippine Orthopedic Association • Philippine Society of General Surgeons • Academy of Filipino Neurosurgeons, Inc. • Philippine Association of Training Officers in Surgery, Inc. • Surgical Oncology Society of the Philippines • Philippine Academy for Head and NecK Surgeons, Inc. • Philippine Spine Society • Philippine Society of Ultrasound in Surgery • Association of Women Surgeons of the Philippines • Philippine Association of Laparoscopic and Endoscopic Surgeons PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2020 PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2020, the year of the pandemic and on-line activities will be a year punctuated by so many firsts for the country let alone our College. Let me detail to you the developments and events we went through as the year progressed. January We hit the ground running as we started meeting as early as the first weeK of the year with meetings by the Trauma, Injury and Burn Care Commission, the Task Shifting program and the Strut for a Cause, Surgeons in Couture modeling show scheduled for March which were first on the agenda for the year. The 1st BOR meeting soon followed on 1/11/2020 which was mainly organizational in nature plus discussions centered on the tasK shifting program that the College wanted to pursue to address unmet surgeries in the rural areas. That evening I was the inducting officer for the new fellows and new diplomates of the PAPRAS at the Novotel Hotel. The following day, 1/12, the Taal Volcano erupted serving as the harbinger for more problems that the country will be facing for the rest of the year. Coordinating with the Southern Tagalog Chapter, the BOR was able to provide funding assistance to the evacuees and to our fellows hit hardest by the outburst of that infamous volcano in Batangas. LiKe any other January, we started our trek to the different chapters of the PCS, starting with the supposed host for our MYC in May, the Bicol chapter (Naga). Metro Manila came after at the Marco Polo Hotel. The STC would have been next but Taal led to a postponement of that visit. On 1/25, the Philippine National Red Cross in cooperation with the WHO, called for a meeting among the different medical societies to discuss preparations for a looming medical outbreak, the 2019-nCov. February The PCS Cancer Commission sponsored the “Alliance for Life: A Cancer Summit” at the PMA auditorium on 2/4 attended by representatives from the oncologic community including the DOH and lay people to discuss priorities to get the National Integrated Cancer Control Law running as well as discussions on cancer policies, politics, funding and accessing of clinical trials. Along with the 7 other specialty division and PMA presidents and representatives, we had a series of meeting this month to discuss issues related to DOH’s circulars on residency training and accreditation/certification, posting of PFs in clinics and manpower data. In relation to the latter, a few regents met with the DOH Health Human Resource Development Bureau to discuss data on specialist’s distribution around the country including the possibility of carrying out the tasK shifting program in underserved regions of the country with the help of the DOH. Visits to the following chapters occurred this month: Cebu-Eastern Visayas (the host for next year’s MYC), Negros Island (Bacolod City), Panay (Iloilo City) and the Northeastern Luzon (Santiago, Isabela) Chapters. March We started the month with a meeting at the House of Representatives with the Committee on Civil Service & Professional Regulation along with the PRC, the DOH, the PMA and all the other specialty division presidents to discuss the Physicians Act, Bills 1103 & 1443. A technical worKing group headed by Congresswoman Angelina Tan of the Committee on Health was tasKed to finalize the House version. That same evening, the PMA met with all the specialty division presidents on issues related to PHIC accreditation, and other plans of the PMA for the year. Visits to two chapters were carried out on the 7th and 8th to the Cordillera Chapter in Baguio City and at Vigan for the Northern Luzon chapter. While there in Vigan I got a call from one of our surgeons where I practice in Pasig that she had contracted the virus. Things were starting to hit close to home. The SURE Commission headed by Juvie Villaflor, along with its partner in missions the World Surgical Foundation, signed an MOA with the League of Municipalities of the Philippines headed by Luis “Chavit” Singson at the Marriott Grand Ballroom on the evening of the 9th. Ominously absent among the LMP members that night were the mayors from Metro Manila as they were called to an emergency meeting at the Palace by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte regarding the possibility of a locKdown. True enough the countrywide quarantine was announced to commence on the 15th of March and for the first time in the history of the BOR, we had an on-line board meeting on March 13 and resumed on the 14th. Zoom subsequently became a word of mouth and the board decided that we had to issue advisories and guidelines during this period of the locKdown. In total, the BOR released 11 guidelines between 3/15 and late April. All other surgical specialty societies under the wing of the PCS subsequently followed suit. Despite the standstill, we Kept ourselves busy with on-line meetings and updating ourselves on what was the best response from the surgical standpoint knowing that we were not the main medical specialty society being consulted to by government agencies but that we also could provide advice for peripheral concerns. Since we had not visited with four chapters before the locKdown was announced, the Executive Committee (myself, Tony Say, Panching Lahoz, Rhoel de Leon, Dexter Aison, Mon Inso & Boogie Montenegro) started administering our chapter inductions on-line starting with the Davao-Southern Mindanao chapter on March 25 and the three that followed were held in April & May – Southern Tagalog chapter (4/13), Central Luzon chapter (4/21) & the Northern Mindanao chapter (5/8). We used these opportunities to connect with our colleagues from these chapters and updating them on goings-on in the college and our dealings with government agencies and the HMO organizations. April With the government mandating continuous quarantine, many meetings continued to be conducted on-line via the various platforms available. Notable among these were the meetings we had with the National TasK Force plus presidents of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the PMA on April 7 regarding confidentiality issues and COVID patients to facilitate contact tracing as well as with presidents of the 22 surgical specialty societies under the PCS, boarded and allied on the 14th. On the 15th we met with all twelve (12) PCS Chapter presidents. Just liKe the meeting of the night before, we met to update them on issues relating to COVID in their communities and specialties, on problems affecting their fellows and trainees as well as offers to provide financial assistance to the chapters to purchase PPE and other essential needs. It was also around this time that, with the help of the Telemedicine NetworK of the Philippines, we were able to start a series of webinars in association with the different surgical societies under the PCS. Guidelines from the surgical societies also started pouring in and these were released and shared in our FB page and website and the various other social media platforms liKe Viber. One of the most attended webinars was the PCS Committee on Continuing Surgical Education sponsored 3-day Certifying Training Course on COVID response in cooperation with the Project Hope, the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation and Brown University. While this started in the latter part of April, two other similar courses were conducted by the CST in early May. May Traditionally, we hold our Mid-year convention and business meeting in the month of May and usually outside the Metro Manila area. For this year the 46th MYC should have been held from May 6-9 at the city of Naga, Camarines Sur but as all such activities were still disallowed, we opted to have it via the on-line route and with the help of Docquity, we conducted the first ever on-line convention in the country last May 28 & 29 with no registration fees including having an on-line business meeting with the approval of our legal counsel. The attendance exceeded our own expectations and was so well received that other specialty societies like PCP and POGS decided to carry out their own conventions the same way. This despite only having a few weeks of preparation as we had only decided to pursue the convention some time in April. The on-line platform became such a convenient way of conducting meetings and webinars that there were times the BOR would meet 2-3x/week especially in the 2nd half of March & in April. By May everyone was practically Zooming regularly anywhere from 2-4x/week for committee and board meetings, department and hospital-wide case conferences, M&Ms, journal clubs, even with relatives and friends from here and abroad whom we couldn't meet physically. People also discovered the use of virtual bacKgrounds allowing creative ways to feature popular or pleasing bacKdrops behind them.