COTABATO CITY (Thursday, September 4, 2025) — Up to 187 marginalized villagers in a newly-created Bangsamoro town in Cotabato province, covering barangays where government forces and Moro rebels figured in deadly clashes in past decades, benefitted from a multi-sector medical mission on Wednesday, September 3.

Local executives in Ligawasan municipality told reporters on Thursday, September 4, that 26 of their constituents in Barangay Gli-Gli, afflicted with cataract and pterygium, were screened by a medical team then and had been scheduled for ophthalmic surgery at the Deseret Surgimed Hospital in Kabacan, Cotabato.

Ligawasan Mayor Ismael Mama said on the Thursday that the medical mission was jointly facilitated by the office of one of the 80 members of the Bangsamoro parliament, the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Sinolinding, Jr., the Deseret Ambulatory Referral Foundation Center Incorporated, Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and personnel of the Ministry of Health-BARMM.

Cause-oriented groups in Cotabato province that are helping push forward the national government’s separate peace overtures with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front also supported the medical mission.

Norma Latip, chairwoman of Barangay Gli-Gli, said 63 Moro and non-Moro villagers received free reading glasses from health workers trained in ophthalmic services by Sinolinding, who is also serving as BARMM’s health minister in concurrent capacity.

Latip and Hashim, who, as mayor, is also figurehead of the cross-section Ligasawan Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, had separately said that more than 80 sick Gli-Gli residents, many of them children of MILF and MNLF members, were also examined and provided with medicines for their ailments during the outreach activity.

Ligawasan is one of the eight towns created by the Bangsamoro parliament via separate enabling measures last year, covering 63 barangays that are inside Cotabato province in Region 12, but are under the jurisdiction of the BARMM government.

The medical mission team of Sinolinding’s office in the parliament and physicians in the MoH-BARMM had treated 9,326 eye patients and sick children, elderly villagers and pregnant women in continuing relief missions since he was appointed member of the Bangsamoro parliament in 2022 by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.

Photo shows a health worker checking the blood pressure of an old Moro woman during Wednesday’s medical mission in Barangay Gli-Gli.