Ninety thousand Filipinos did not survive the year.
In July 2021, at the FTI Complex in Taguig City, private and public leaders broke ground on the Philippines' first hospital built solely to fight cancer — a disease that claims 90,000 Filipino lives each year. The Healthway Cancer Care Center, a 100-bed facility expected to open in 2023, represents a convergence of legislative will and private investment in answer to a quiet, devastating crisis. It is a nation acknowledging, in concrete and steel, that a disease this pervasive demands a home of its own.
- Cancer kills 90,000 Filipinos every year and diagnosed over 150,000 in 2020 alone, yet no hospital in the country had ever been built exclusively to treat it.
- Patients and families have long navigated fragmented care across multiple clinics, absorbing catastrophic costs with no specialized center to anchor their treatment.
- AC Health, backed by the Ayala Group, broke ground on a 100-bed comprehensive cancer hospital in Taguig City, partnering with global oncology solutions provider Varian-CTSI to meet both quality and affordability goals.
- The Cancer Control Act gave the private sector a legal opening, and this groundbreaking is the most concrete response yet — a two-year construction clock now running toward a July 2023 opening.
- Even as the ceremony unfolded, the country remained deep in its COVID-19 vaccination drive, with AC Health having already administered over 193,000 doses — a reminder that this hospital is being built inside an ongoing public health emergency.
On a Thursday morning in July 2021, officials gathered at the FTI Complex in Taguig City to break ground on a hospital the Philippines had never had before. The Healthway Cancer Care Center — the country's first facility designed from the ground up as a dedicated cancer specialty hospital — was being built in response to a crisis hiding in plain sight.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the Philippines. In 2020, more than 150,000 Filipinos received a diagnosis, and 90,000 did not survive the year. These were patients with nowhere specialized to go, families managing care across scattered clinics, and a healthcare system straining under the weight. When the Cancer Control Act opened the door for private sector investment in dedicated cancer hospitals, AC Health — the healthcare arm of the Ayala Group — stepped through.
The groundbreaking united Taguig City Mayor Lino Cayetano, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, and Ayala Corp. president Fernando Zobel de Ayala. The planned 100-bed facility would not be a general hospital with an oncology wing — it would offer everything from screening and diagnosis to treatment and post-cancer care under one roof. AC Health partnered with Varian-CTSI, a global cancer care solutions provider, to ensure the hospital could deliver high-standard services at affordable cost. Zobel de Ayala named the stakes plainly: catastrophic out-of-pocket expenses needed to be reduced, early detection needed to improve, and patients needed education. Health Secretary Duque called cancer a critical public health problem with consequences that ripple through entire families and the broader healthcare system.
The ceremony also included the donation of 1,000 flu vaccine doses to Taguig City — a smaller gesture that reflected the larger moment. The country was still deep in its COVID-19 response, and AC Health had already administered over 193,000 vaccine doses across priority groups. The new cancer hospital would join an existing AC Health portfolio spanning clinics, hospitals, drugstores, and a health app — all framed by Ayala as part of a long-standing commitment to national development.
The real measure of the promise made that morning will arrive in 2023, when the doors open and the first patients walk in — finally, to a place built entirely around fighting the disease that has been quietly taking so many of them.
On a Thursday morning in July 2021, officials gathered at the FTI Complex in Taguig City to turn the first shovel of earth for a hospital that didn't yet exist but was urgently needed. Healthway Cancer Care Center—the Philippines' first facility built from the ground up as a dedicated cancer specialty hospital—was being born in response to a crisis that had been quietly killing the country.
Cancer had become the second leading cause of death in the Philippines. In 2020 alone, over 150,000 Filipinos received a cancer diagnosis. Ninety thousand did not survive the year. These were not abstract statistics. They were patients who had nowhere specialized to go, families managing treatment across multiple clinics, and a healthcare system stretched thin trying to serve them. The Cancer Control Act, passed as Republic Act No. 11215, had opened the door for the private sector to build dedicated cancer hospitals. AC Health, the healthcare arm of the Ayala Group, decided to walk through it.
The groundbreaking brought together the machinery of both public and private health leadership. Taguig City Mayor Lino Cayetano stood alongside Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and Fernando Zobel de Ayala, president and chief executive of Ayala Corp. Paolo Borromeo, who leads AC Health, was there too. The 100-bed facility they were inaugurating would not be a general hospital with an oncology ward. It would be comprehensive—screening, diagnosis, treatment, post-cancer care, all under one roof, all designed around the specific needs of cancer patients. The target completion date was July 2023, just two years away.
AC Health had partnered with Varian-CTSI, a global provider of cancer care solutions serving over 100 hospitals and clinics worldwide, to ensure the hospital could deliver both quality and affordability. That last word mattered. Cancer treatment in the Philippines often meant catastrophic out-of-pocket costs. Zobel de Ayala, speaking at the ceremony, named the problem directly: there was an urgent need to minimize those expenses, to improve screening so cancers were caught earlier, to educate patients about the disease itself. "There is an urgent need to develop sustainable solutions," he said. Health Secretary Duque echoed the sentiment, calling cancer a critical public health problem with enormous impact on patients, families, and the entire healthcare system.
The hospital was not the only gesture that day. Ayala and AC Health handed over 1,000 doses of flu vaccine to Taguig City as part of their broader pandemic response. It was a smaller thing than a new hospital, but it signaled something about the moment: the country was still fighting COVID-19, still vaccinating, still trying to protect people from preventable disease even as it reckoned with the longer crisis of cancer. By mid-July 2021, AC Health had already administered more than 193,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine across priority groups in local government units, the Ayala Group, and partner companies.
The Healthway Cancer Care Center would join AC Health's existing portfolio—Healthway Clinics, Qualimed Hospitals, Generika Drugstores, IE Medica, MedEthix, and the HealthNow mobile app. It was part of a larger vision, one that Ayala framed as rooted in nearly two centuries of commitment to national development. The company called it #BrigadangAyala, an integrated response spanning disaster relief, public education, social enterprises, and public health advocacy.
But the real measure would come in 2023, when the doors opened and the first cancer patients walked in. Until then, the groundbreaking was a promise—that specialized care was coming, that the second leading cause of death in the country would finally have a hospital built entirely around fighting it.
Citas Notables
Cancer is a critical public health problem with an enormous impact on patients, families, and the healthcare system. There is an urgent need to develop sustainable solutions.— Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Ayala Corp. president and AC Health chairman
Now more than ever, there is a need to provide better avenues for cancer patients to seek consultation and treatment. We are delighted that AC Health will be establishing the first specialized hospital for cancer in the Philippines.— Health Secretary Francisco Duque III
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why did it take until 2021 for the Philippines to have a dedicated cancer hospital?
The Cancer Control Act only passed in 2019. Before that, there was no legal framework encouraging private hospitals to specialize in cancer. Patients were scattered across general hospitals with oncology departments. There was no center of expertise, no economy of scale.
And Ayala decided to be first?
They saw the numbers—90,000 deaths a year, 150,000 new cases. That's not a niche problem. It's a public health emergency. The law gave them permission; the need gave them reason.
What makes this different from just adding an oncology wing to an existing hospital?
Everything. A dedicated cancer hospital means the entire building is designed around cancer care. The imaging equipment, the treatment protocols, the staff training, the support services—all optimized for one disease. It's the difference between a general store and a specialty shop.
The partnership with Varian-CTSI—what does that bring?
Global expertise. Varian works with over 100 hospitals worldwide. They bring proven systems for delivering high-quality cancer care affordably. That's the hard part in the Philippines—quality usually means expensive.
Two years to build a 100-bed hospital seems fast.
It is. But the need is urgent. Every month the hospital isn't open, thousands more Filipinos are diagnosed. The timeline reflects that pressure.
What happens to cancer patients in the meantime?
They continue doing what they've been doing—traveling between clinics, paying out of pocket, sometimes delaying treatment because they can't afford it. That's what this hospital is meant to change.