COTABATO CITY (October 7, 2025) — A newly-created Bangsamoro municipality got on Monday, October 6, a new patient transport vehicle, medical and food supplies for pregnant women and malnourished children from the office of the health minister of the Bangsamoro region.
Bangsamoro Health Minister Kadil Sinolinding, Jr. personally turned over on Monday to the mayor of Kapalawan, Norman Enalang, the patient-transport vehicle, or PTV, procured using the Transitional Development Impact Fund of his office in the 80-seat regional parliament.
The physician-ophthalmologist Sinolinding, who is minister of the Ministry of Health-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, also functions as member of the 80-member regional lawmaking body in concurrent capacity.
Kapalawan is one of the eight towns, covering 63 barangays in the BARMM’s Special Geographic Area in Cotabato in Region 12, that the Bangsamoro parliament created last year via separate enabling measures.
Enalang and Engco Dalid, chairman of Barangay Manarapan in Kapalawan, separately told reporters on Tuesday, October 7, that the turnover to them of the PTV was part of the medical outreach mission of Sinolinding in their municipality that BARMM’s chief minister, Abdulrauf A. Macacua, helped organize.
Enalang said a medical service team led by Sinolinding, composed of medics and volunteers from peace advocacy groups in Cotabato province, also distributed rice and other food supplies then to marginalized families in Barangay Manarapan.
The outreach team had also provided 70 elderly residents with free reading glasses and had scheduled 19 others for cataract and pterygium surgical procedures that Sinolinding shall oversee.
“We are grateful to their team. The patient transport vehicle we now have will boost the emergency response capability of our virtually infant local government unit,” Enalang said.
A 39-year-old mother, Sepe Atong, and her 15-year-old daughter, Farhata, had separately said that the PTV that their LGU got from Sinolinding’s office will hasten the transport of sick Kapalawan residents to hospitals in nearby towns in Cotabato province and in BARMM’s capital, Cotabato City.