Healing with
Compassion.

Divine Word Hospital is a Catholic tertiary, Level 3, 179 bed hospital located in Tacloban City, Leyte. Region VIII or Eastern Visayas has a population of 4,089,734 (as of year 2010) with 78% of population living in the rural area and 21.8% in the cities. Of the 70% living in the cities about 547,000 live below poverty line.

In 1964, Father Earnest Hoerdemann, SVD, rector of the Divine Word College took up the plan for a Catholic Hospital in Region VIII. With the help of German government and German Bishops, missionaries and other generous benefactors, the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) Fathers in collaboration with the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing (MBS), Germany, established a 100 bed Hospital equipped with modern facilities. The hospital became the training hospital for the College of Nursing, Medical Technology, Medicine and other paramedical courses of Divine Word College that later became Divine Word University (DWU).

On February 7, 1965, the hospital was blessed and inaugurated. The following day, patients were admitted. The SVD Fathers who owned the DWU gave full administration of the Divine Word hospital (DWH) to the Philippine Province of the MBS of Tutzing, Germany.

Divine Word Hospital has been at the forefront in offering new services. It was the first to open a Dizziness, Hearing and Voice Center and a Neurosciences Unit; and also, the first to offer Hemodialysis, CT scan, Digital Mammography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in Region VIII.

The diagnostic services of the hospital are among the best equipped in the Region.

The Residency Training Programs of the Department of Medicine and the Department of Pediatrics are accredited by their respective Specialty Societies. At present, the hospital is working towards the accreditation of the Residency Training Program of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Department of Surgery.

At present the hospital with 179 bed capacity has 17 service beds assigned to indigent patients. Currently it has over 400 employees.

The hospital has a competent staff with active and visiting consultants, resident physicians, nurses, other personnel who are responsible for efficient and effective care of patients. The patient regardless of race, creed, and status in life is treated as someone sacred, any person who suffers is sacred to us, because of Him whom he/she resembles. Any person who nurses or helps someone to his feet, who consoles or heals is even more completely the image of Christ.