Eight years have passed since Leonardo Sarmiento last worked overseas, but the safety net built for Filipino migrant workers did not turn its back on him when his family needed it most.
Sarmiento spent more than thirteen years as an overseas Filipino worker in Libya and Qatar, sending money home and building a life for his family from a distance. That chapter of his life has long since closed — yet when his wife required emergency surgery, it was the Department of Migrant Workers’ OFW Hospital that stepped in to provide care.
He has since expressed deep gratitude toward the medical team responsible for his wife’s successful procedure. For Sarmiento, what stood out was not just the outcome of the operation but the standard of care that came with it — clean facilities, quality medical attention, and staff he felt genuinely looked after his family.
His experience has now become an endorsement. Sarmiento is urging fellow OFWs and their relatives not to hesitate in seeking help from the OFW Hospital, describing it as a resource that remains open and ready regardless of circumstance.
The hospital operates as part of the DMW’s broader mandate to carry out President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s directive ensuring that overseas workers and their dependents have access to humane and dependable healthcare — not only while abroad, but across every stage of their lives.
