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Arroyo monitoring situation of Sentosa nurses

President Arroyo is monitoring the situation of ten Filipino nurses who have been cleared by the US Department of Health of charges that they endangered their patients, ABS-CBN reported.

Deputy spokesman Anthony Golez said in a statement the President is watching the case "since the president has directed the Department of Foreign Affairs to extend their utmost support to these Filipinos in order for them to afford good defense lawyers during the critical time of trial."

"The President considers all OFW's as vital pillars of our strong nation whom should always be given the needed attention they deserve anytime they need it," Golez added.

In fact, he said that when Mrs. Arroyo visited New York last October 2007 to attend the United Nations General Assembly, "she met with the accused and made sure that help is extended to them by the Philippine Embassy."

The ten nurses were part of the collective group who call themselves the Sentosa 27, a group of Pinoy nurses who claimed they were duped by a local recruitment agency named Sentosa and hired as nurses in the US but made to work at lesser jobs.

Ten were later charged with reckless endangerment of their patients because they allegedly walked out on their patients in a nursing home in 2006.

A spokesman from the state Department of Health said in a report by New York’s Newsday said that in their inquiry, they found that residents at a Smithtown nursing home "were not placed in jeopardy" by the mass resignation of 10 nurses in 2006.

The health department's findings were released less than two weeks before the nurses - all immigrants - are scheduled for a January 28 trial in Suffolk County, New York, on charges of conspiracy and endangering patients in a pediatric ventilation unit at Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center.