BENGUET residents celebrate the opening of the La Trinidad Main Health Center with dances and other Cultural presentations.

THE La Trinidad Main Health Center in Benguet, which caters to 16barangays, has been renovated and accredited with Philippine Health Insurance Corp. for its outpatient benefit package.

This means that the’21,425 households comprising these barangays can now avail themselves of treatment in the health center. Thanks to SM Foundation and BDO Foundation who undertook

the complete renovation, quality health service is brought to these communities.

In the past, the Rural Health Unit of La Trinidad (RHU-La Trinidad), the principal workplace of the present-day Municipal Health Services Office, was called the La Trinidad Dispensary in Poblacion, La Trinidad, Benguet, Mountain Province. Benguet was formerly a subprovince of Mountain Province until June 18, 1966, with the enactment of Republic Act 4695, creating the provinces of Benguet, Mountain Province, Ifugao and Kalinga-Apayao.

On July 16, 1990, the RHU was devastated by an earthquake that rocked the whole of Luzon. RHU services continued at temporary tents installed at the Provincial Capitol grounds. Reconstruction was promptly undertaken in 1991. Due to the need to further renovate the building, the clinic was temporarily transferred to the La Trinidad Central School (Home-Economics Building). The RHU had been enlarged and refurbished several times from 1997 to 1998.

Today, the renovated center which serves 100 patients a day has a laboratory, dental room, treatment area, consultation area, family-planning room, prenatal and postnatal room, immunization area, cold chain storage area, and an FTS Wellness Center for children and the elderly.