PGH Breast Care Center and Mammography Room

The PGH Breast Care Center and the mammography service were established in 2002 by Avon and the Philippine Cancer Society, offering a one-stop-clinic run by the PGH Surgical Oncology Unit for the screening, diagnosing and treating breast diseases.

The Breast Care Center receives an average of 100 patients per day and does chemotherapy sessions. Avon continues to raise funds to help maintain the center through their Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer (KGBC) Walk, an annual campaign in the fight against the second most common malignancy in women.
  CECAP Network Program

The Cervical Cancer Prevention Network is a coalition of organizations from the private and public sectors, including health professionals, and all committed to eliminate cervical cancer among Filipino women, established following the Jhpeigo Global Congress on Cervical Cancer Prevention in 2005. It was only a matter of time after this momentuous gathering that the UP-PGH Cancer Institute, in cooperation with the World Health Organization, Department of Health and its other partners, successfully embarked on the movement promoting the woman’s basic right to health.


  CECAP envisages a cervical cancer-free Philippines. Its plan of action comprises increasing the country’s readiness for implementation of cervical cancer prevention and control efforts, expanding access to high quality visual inspection and cryotherapy at quality assured facilities and improving program performance, undertaking research on country preparedness for HPV vaccination, and building capabilities to sustain and expand large-scale, coordinated cervical cancer prevention efforts.
  CECAP Center

As CECAP builds capacity in the community, the program creates a best practices' scenario for a replicable cervical cancer prevention agenda. Striving to develop centers of excellence for service, training, and research for healthcare providers and advocates, the CECAP Center aspires to be a model for the prevention of cervical cancer especially for the underserved.

Two years in the making, the CIF sought the help of the GlaxoSmithKline Foundation in the construction of the unit.
  Cancer Detection Clinic

A diagnosis of cancer has the ability to turn people's world upside down and make them fearful of the future. The impact is felt not only by the patient, family members or friends but also by the whole community. The cancer screening facility, founded in mutual aid with the Chevron Corporation, aims to take that fear away by providing a quality cancer information platform, which empowers people to make better informed treatment and quality of life decisions, offering the hope of saving many patients lives through early detection of cancer, while at the same time lowering the overall cost of healthcare delivery. This will also allow the patient to carry on and restate control over one’s life during the journey with cancer.

The clinic aims to set a pilot model center which is sustainable and replicable. It is dedicated to preventing cancer and saving lives through early detection linked to treatment and preventive counselling. It also focuses on improving the quality of life of those who are sick, or living with cancer through patient care and education.
  Infrastructural Rehabilitations and Renovations

Administration Office

The organizational complex of the Cancer Institute was revamped, thanks to PAGCOR and friends. Repainting with different colors gave birth to the nomenclature of rooms: the Beige Room (the CI Chair Office), the Purple Room (Vice Chairs' Office), the Blue Room (Conference Area), the Green Room (Staff/Personnel Common Area), and the Yellow Room (Clinic).


  Andres Soriano Foundation Library

The oncologic research center of the Institute, named after its donor, is being maintained by the Andres Soriano Foundation (ASF). It is located in the Administration Office and is managed by the ASF Librarian.


  Charity Ward, Chapel and Outpatient Clinics

The corporal rehabilitation of the general wards and 2 outpatient clinics was sponsored by PAGCOR; it included repair of ceilings and electric fans and repainting jobs. The Institute also has a prayer nook that allows patients and their relatives to commune with the Almighty. It has been renovated through the generosity of both PAGCOR and OSEWA.


  Pediatric Ward and Outpatient Clinic

Foundations like the Elena Paez-Tan and Lakan Bakor continuously support the Pediatric Oncology Ward, which can accommodate up to eight (8) patients suffering from malignancies at their very tender age, together with its corresponding outpatient clinic, where the kids are brought for follow-up and new patients are seen and attended to. These charities have provided the children a more comfortable place to stay in the hospital as well as amenities like books and a television set.


  Hospice Care Ward

The Vicente Pacheco Family followed suit adopting the three-bed Hospice Care Ward. The family fixed ward up with the necessary repainting, repair of comfort rooms, and installation of cabinets; sets of curtains, pillows and cases, waste baskets, water buckets and tabos, and other needed instruments requested by the Hospice Care Team have been granted.


  Brachytherapy Units

This special division of the Institute got its own facelift. Employees of the Bureau of Customs, led by Commissioner Antonio Bernardo, contributed for the renovation of the Brachytherapy Operating Room. A second-hand but more technologically-advanced anesthesia monitor has also been provided for by the UP-PGH Anesthesiology Department to complement the new OR, while Senator Aquilino Pimentel donated a suction machine as well as various valuable paraphernalia (an RAI apron, a laryngoscope, and linen, among others).


  The University of the Philippines Medical Society in America (UPMASA) through Drs. Norma and Alvin Panahon represented Dr. Luciano Sotto and transformed the Brachytherapy Charity Ward into a well-boding remedial center when they had the room repainted and air-conditioned and furnished its gynecologic instruments beginning 1996. UPMASA went the extra mile as they patronized the adjacent proposed radioisotope (RAI) room and became the brachytherapy nurses' champion when they improved their station. And with these foregoing developments, the CI medical and paramedical team has become more motivated in doing their best for the patients.


  PAGCOR once again lend their aid in 2002 when they rehabilitated Brachytherapy Pay Ward Room 104, and together with UPMASA, Room 102. Meanwhile, investments in Room 103 restoration were done by Engr. Mario Malinis and his daughter, who, on her debut birthday requested that gifts be in cash or checks to be channeled to the renovation.

  Ambulatory Chemotherapy Room

Ms. Butchay Africa and Ms. Tess Gonzales, former and incumbent presidents to the Quota International Manila South, headed their organization in the upgrading of the former activity center to what is now the Ambulatory Chemotherapy Room, for use by all adult and pediatric patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment on out-patient basis.


  Gynecology Outpatient Clinic

The Assumption High School Class '87 held a fund-raising campaign featuring "Beauty and the Beast" to support the Gynecologic Outpatient Services. Mrs. del Campos (wife of Dr. Ron Campos, a gynecologic oncology fellow) encouraged her classmates to earmark the proceeds of the drive for the renovation and propping up of the clinic.


  Outpatient Clinic Waiting Areas

The beautification of the Institute's waiting areas for outpatients was initially funded by friends and family of the late ramp model, Trisha Borromeo, and the group from Bulong-Pulungan sa Westin, a weekly media forum of newsmakers. In 2008, the waiting areas of the Institute were renovated by the SM Foundation, Inc. under Mrs. Connie Ganuelas and were renamed the SM Felicidad Sy Multipurpose Areas.


  Medical Records Section

The Cancer Institute runs its own outpatient clinics that attend to the medical, surgical, pediatric, gynecologic, and radiologic oncologic needs of its patients; as such, the records of its patients should also be kept safe in its own separate room at the Medical Records Section. United Laboratories started supporting the unit by shelling out for the wages of an employee-assistant to the CI Medical Records Officer, which was followed through by the Osewa Club via the Kobe Rotary when it funded for the section's modernization in 2002.


  "Dito Po Magtanong" (Information Desk)

This patient care assistance center was refurbished courtesy of Mrs. Lilia Lim of the Le Gallerie de Fleur, Inc. under the Marco Polo Group of Companies which financed the reconstruction of the room in 2002. Sinag Volunteers presently staff the information desk.


  "Kusina ng Bayan"

Ricky Reyes spearheaded the establishment of the Kusina ng Bayan equipped with a gas range, a refrigerator and a microwave oven for the sake of the cancer patients and their caregivers who could use a place cook, store and reheat their food during their confinement in the Institute. This project was also supported by First Gentleman Mike Arroyo in 2001.
  Projects That Do More Than Cure: Healing Programs

CI Healing Gardens

As part of the "Concept of Healing", the Osewa Garden Club and the Los Baños Orchid Society support and maintain the healing garden of CI that the patients, staff and visitors will have a place that will uplift their spirits, soothe their pain and feel healed.

  The Concept of Healing
"I have cancer. Inside me grow cells that slowly kill me, so chemotherapy and radiotherapy kill them that I may live. But, transformed into a battlefield, my body is aching, and assaulted by uncertainty, my spirit is crumbling.
Although weak, I don’t give up. I hope. I pray. For love and life, I dream of living on. Like a bush that has been trampled on, but rising again and flowering. Like a tree surviving floods, droughts, bruising winds and burning sun, sprouting new leaves and limbs to replace those lost in the storm and to defy storms that are still to come, and sending its roots deeper into the earth and its branches higher into the sky.
So while science and medicine battle my cancer cells, I wish I could go to a place where nature's healing hands would put salves on my spirit's wounds and imbue new vigor in my hopes. I wish for a place where I could feel grass and earth under my feet, where I could hear leaves playing with the breeze, where I could see and smell and touch the flowers under the sun or the stars - where I may paint or draw or sing or dance or simply think, where I may create beauty that is tangible to everyone or visible only in my mind; where a minute is like forever that I won't worry about time, or where a minute is so sweet and yet so finite that I would look forward to tomorrow and—yes—to forever." - Osewa, 2002


  "Munting Paraiso"

A play room complete with toys and books for our young cancer patients, the Munting Paraiso is situated near the pediatric ward of the Institute through the munificence of the Ricky Reyes Trust Fund, initially financed with Lety Magsanoc and Marixi Prieto. The kids are also brought to parties and other fun activities by Ricky Reyes himself, in the hope of giving the little ones truly a piece of Paradise on this earth.


  Chrissvie M. Marasigan Art

The atmosphere in the Cancer Institute turned from dull to dynamic and from dreary to delightful, compliments of the then 17-year old Miss Marasigan in 2002, who added to the harbouring ambience of the Institute by painting its walls with butterflies, flowers, trees, birds, fishes and other elements in nature.


  'Reiki' Services

The Hari Om Tat Sat Hermitage, a worldwide organization with the mission of "service to humanity through personal evolution", provides training and services on healing modalities like Reiki, meditation, sound healing, shamanic extraction healing and conscious breathing. From 2001 to 2005, free Reiki services for patients, family members and health staff were rendered by the Hermitage every second Tuesday of the month at the Cancer Institute. The Hermitage had also trained doctors and nurses on the use of Reiki, a type of touch therapy that enhances the sense of wellbeing and revitalizes life force energy.


  "Lugaw" Feeding Program

Every Wednesday, for more than nine years now, Mrs. Trinidad Co fills the Cancer Institute patients with sumptuous servings of hot rice porridge.

  Psychosocial Support

As cancer is not only a disease that affects the body, but also plaguing the mind and the spirit, management of its victim, should therefore not only be geared towards killing the cancer cells but also in revitalizing the spiritual, intellectual and emotional features of the person. To ensure that psychosocial aspect of treatment is met for our patients, the Psychiatry Department of UP-PGH heads the coordination of all PGH-CI oncologic units with all support groups in the Institute and its activities towards a multidisciplinary approach of treatment of the body, mind and spirit.