Inaugural Address of PAFP Pampanga President

Dear friends and colleagues, our esteemed President of the PAFP, Dr. Rey Olazo, my friend and aunt, Dr. Zorayda Leopando, Past President of the PAFP, my dear classmate, Dr. Alex Pineda, Board Director of the PAFP, Dr. Zenaida Lising, President of the Pampanga Medical Society, Dr. Danton Lising, Pampanga Chapter President, PAFP, good evening and welcome!

It is with great honor to have the big guns of the Philippine Academy of Family Physicians here tonight and let’s all welcome them with a warm round of applause. You have no idea as to how much we appreciate your coming here to grace our Induction Ceremonies.

From left: Dr. Myna Miranda, Dr. Glenn Mallari (incoming Pampanga PAFP President), and Dr. Reynaldo Olazo, PAFP President and Guest of Honor
It was with great reluctance at first that I accepted my nomination for the office of the President of the Pampanga Chapter. It’s because I do not have the affable character of our founding President, Dr. Pedro Papio, the dancing prowess of a Dr. Gloria de la Torre, the kindness and warmth of a Dr. Yolanda Lee, the boundless energy of a Dr. Zenaida Lising, the happy disposition of a Dr. Rudy Gutierrez.


From left: Dr. Glenn Mallari, Dr. Cenon Ponce, Dr. Alex Pineda, UST Medicine Class '83

I wish I had the wit and humor of our current President, Dr. Danton Lising, the dashing personality of a Dr. Vic Valencia.

I wish I was as articulate and organized as the beautiful Dr. Bernadette Aguilar.

Alas, I have none of these sterling qualities which made these esteemed colleagues to become President of the Pampanga Chapter. But soon I realized that it’s time to give back to an organization that had given me so much. It is time to give back to an organization that accepted me as a friend, and now has given me the gift of leadership among friends. It is here where I had grown as a professional and as an individual. I realize now I could do it by sharing my passion for medical informatics.

Today, we are the first, to my knowledge, the Chapter with its own website. It’s still not a regular website in the usual definition of the word, but a blog, but it’s still a website nonetheless. Anybody anywhere in the world with access to the internet, including a cell phone with internet connection, can see and access our website at pafppampanga.blogspot.com. If you browse our blog, you will be appraised about the various activities of our Chapter, in words and pictures.

In that blog, we have published an online version of a reviewer for Certified Family Physician members who are planning to tackle the tough Diplomate examinations, in order to upgrade their academic status and become full-pledged Diplomates and Fellows. In our website, you will also be able to see the CME schedule of the Chapter, which enables Chapter members to have a rich opportunity to achieve CME objectives and bridge gaps in their medical knowledge. Links to various websites important to Family Medicine are also there, so that with one click of the mouse can take one to the WONCA, WHO, AAFP, CDC, ADA, etc in an instant.

We have also married our Quality Assurance projects with medical informatics, by appraising members about current developments in Medical Research that will have a great impact in the way we practice Family Medicine. Among these are short modules I presented about updates to the ATP III NCEP Guidelines in July 2004, days before it was even published in the journal. Another short module will be on hs CRP, including its significance and current recommendations from the Center for Disease Control and the American Heart Association.

Future projects being considered and coordinated with the Pampanga Medical Society are short modules on Medical Informatics 101 for the practicing Family Physician, Enhancing your practice through Information Technology, Medical Informatics at the Point-of-Care, and Electronic Medical Records.
An environmental protection project is also being coordinated with Dr. Rey Espiritu, who is very active in NGO programs uplifting the economic condition of poor families in depressed areas.

Lord Turnberg, former president of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom, predicted some years back that “medicine will change more in the next 20 years than in the past 2,000”. With the paradigm shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, that prediction has been fulfilled.

In the midst of this earth shaking change, the role of the Family Physician becomes more evident. Nowhere outside of the immediate family is the relationship closer among people than between the patient and his family physician. As medicine becomes more and more depersonalized because of extreme subspecialization and dominance by HMOs, the Family Physician’s role as a caring, compassionate and dependable healer stands out among his colleagues. The Family Physician can keep pace with the progress of medical science and modern technology but at the same time be able to keep his role as a caring and compassionate human being. In my humble opinion, it is in the expression of our humanity that makes us distinct.

Finally, I would like to end my message with a quote from one of my heroes, who was imprisoned for his political beliefs for 28 long years in now famous Robben Island, just off Cape Town. He is 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela. During his inaugural address in 1994 to become President of once-racist South Africa he said that:

“We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

“Thank you very much and God Bless us all!

Glenn Q. Mallari, MD, DPAFP