The Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) Hospital and Diagnostic Center, or simply the OFW Hospital, is a specialty hospital in

San Fernando San Fernando may refer to: People *Ferdinand III of Castile (c. 1200–1252), called ''San Fernando'' (Spanish) or ''Saint Ferdinand'', King of Castile, León, and Galicia Places Argentina *San Fernando de la Buena Vista, city of Greater Buenos ...

Pampanga Pampanga, officially the Province of Pampanga (; ; ), is a province in Central Luzon in the Philippines. Lying on the northern shore of Manila Bay, Pampanga is bordered by Tarlac to the north, Nueva Ecija to the northeast, Bulacan to the east, ...

, Philippines. It is meant to cater to Filipino

migrant worker A migrant worker is a person who Human migration, migrates within a home country or outside it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not have an intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work. Migrant workers ...

History

The Philippine government planned to set up a hospital dedicated to Filipino migrant workers, officially classified as

Overseas Filipino Worker Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) is a term often used to refer to Filipino migrant workers, people with Filipino citizenship who reside in another country for a limited period of employment. The number of these workers was roughly 1.77 million ...

s. The provincial government of

donated the land where the hospital was built. Bloomberry Cultural Foundation Inc. of the Razon Group funded its construction. The groundbreaking ceremony for the OFW Hospital was held on May 1, 2019. However, its construction did not begin until February 2020. The

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

hampered the construction's progress. The

Department of Labor and Employment A ministry of labour ('' UK''), or labor ('' US''), also known as a department of labour, or labor, is a government department responsible for setting labour standards, labour dispute mechanisms, employment, workforce participation, training, and s ...

(DOLE) and President

Rodrigo Duterte Rodrigo Roa Duterte (, ; born March 28, 1945) is a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the 16th president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022. He is the first Philippine president from Mindanao, and is the oldest person to assum ...

, through an executive order, have fast-tracked the hospital project. It began operating on May 2, 2022, with its polyclinic. However, the hospital remains underused. In January 2023, the

Department of Migrant Workers The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW; ) is the Executive Departments of the Philippines, executive department of the Politics of the Philippines, Philippine government responsible for the protection of the rights and promotion of the welfare ...

(DMW) took over the hospital's operations from DOLE.

Facilities

The OFW Hospital has a bed capacity of 102. It is intended mainly to serve Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and their dependents. In 2024, President Marcos Jr., as tribute to

's Secretary Ople, led the

groundbreaking Groundbreaking, also known as cutting, sod-cutting, turning the first sod, turf-cutting, or a sod-turning ceremony, is a traditional ceremony in many cultures that celebrates the first day of construction for a building or other project. Such cer ...

of the Hospital's Bagong Pilipinas Cancer Care Center, which is the country's third such facility. Its services include

chemotherapy Chemotherapy (often abbreviated chemo, sometimes CTX and CTx) is the type of cancer treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs (list of chemotherapeutic agents, chemotherapeutic agents or alkylating agents) in a standard chemotherapy re ...

diagnostic Diagnosis (: diagnoses) is the identification of the nature and cause of a certain phenomenon. Diagnosis is used in a lot of different academic discipline, disciplines, with variations in the use of logic, analytics, and experience, to determine " ...

and cancer staging, plus

surgical oncology Surgical oncology is the branch of surgery applied to oncology; it focuses on the surgical management of tumors, especially cancerous tumors. As one of several modalities in the management of cancer, the specialty of surgical oncology has evolv ...

References

{{reflist Hospitals in the Philippines Buildings and structures in Pampanga Hospitals established in 2022 2022 establishments in the Philippines