No patient can be turned away
Meanwhile, Dr. Josefino C. Qua has just finished up with a morning surgery and rushes to the campus to meet with us. But some other Tzu Chi members first talk to us about the early days at Tzu Chi Philippines. In a long-ago meeting, the first CEO spoke of wanting to provide medical services, and Dr. Qua’s mother, who was a Tzu Chi commissioner, raised her hand and said her son was a doctor. Qua, who thus far hasn’t joined in our conversation, breaks in with a quip: “And just like that, my mother donated me to Tzu Chi.”
He goes on to describe the early days of the free clinics, and says they just had to make do with very limited resources. They held clinics in borrowed schoolrooms, conducted operations on office desks, and unscrewed wall lamps to set up surgical lighting. To find surgical patients, they asked clinic visitors, “Where are you from? How about we go there?” And so they trekked long distances with large teams to provide services across the land.
Tzu Chi began providing free clinical services in the Philippines in 1995, and the undertaking went so successfully that Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation CEO Lin Chin-Lon was prompted to personally travel to the Philippines and see for himself the secret of their success. “It really was a makeshift operation, but they did an outstanding job.”
Tzu Chi’s free clinical services have since expanded from the Philippines to many other countries around the world. The members of the Tzu Chi International Medical Association (TIMA), all of whom are doctors who take part in the free clinics, return to Hualien in Taiwan each year at the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival to spend the holidays together with Master Cheng Yen. This annual tradition first started with doctors providing free clinical services in the Philippines, and it later became a tradition among TIMA physicians throughout the world. Lin says: “It is really quite scintillating to get together with others from all over the world to share our thoughts and insights. Some people have to travel 40 hours to get back, but they’re only too happy to make the trip.”
Dr. Qua notes that teams at the free clinics in the Philippines have seen lots of truly horrific cases, and he explains that people who lack funds to see a doctor often put off getting a minor problem treated until it becomes a big problem. That is why, when a free clinic travels to remote areas, the doctors try to see absolutely as many patients as possible. When they take off, they don’t want to leave disappointed local residents untreated.
On October 1, 2023, Master Cheng Yen gave her blessings to a plan by Tzu Chi Philippines to build a new hospital there.
There had actually been plans in place for some years to build a new hospital. Qua asks me to take a close look at the letters after his name on his business card—MD, MBA, MHM. The “MD” stands for “Doctor of Medicine,” “MBA” for “Master of Business Administration,” and “MHM” for “Master of Hospital Management.” It must have been fate, he says, that he should have acquired all the necessary qualifications in advance to run the new hospital. “I had always thought it was something for my next life, not this one.” Speaking in Hokkien, a smile of satisfaction steals across his face. At age 70, he is preparing to lead the establishment of a new hospital, but he emphasizes: “After we’ve built the hospital we’ll be able to treat patients at a permanent location, but we’ll go on providing traveling free clinical services because there are still people who can’t come to Manila for treatment. We still have to go to them.”
Working in makeshift conditions, medical professionals do their absolute best to make sure that everyone in need of treatment will get it. (courtesy of Josefino C. Qua)
Dr. Alfredo Li, director of the Tzu Chi Eye Center, frequently makes friendly small talk with people in Tagalog. The Eye Center is busy, but the atmosphere is always cheerful.