8 foreign kidney patients exempted

MANILA, Philippines – Eight foreigners will receive new kidneys at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) after the Department of Health exempted them from a ban on kidney transplants on foreign patients, a source said yesterday.

The source said one of the eight patients, an Israeli, was set to undergo the procedure at the NKTI yesterday.

“They appealed for reconsideration and it was granted,” the source told The STAR.

“We are just worried that this will set a bad precedent for other foreign patients. Other patients will also surely seek an exemption,” the source added.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Enrique Ona, NKTI director and president of the Philippine Society of Transplant Surgeons, said the eight foreigners were excluded from the ban for “humanitarian reasons.”

The patients have been in the Philippines “for four to six months now” or long before Health Secretary Francisco Duque III announced the ban last April 29, he added.

President Arroyo has instructed Duque to follow a World Health Assembly resolution promoting cadaveric donation.

Ona said the eight patients appealed for reconsideration before the National Ethics Committee.

“These patients are sick and they have been here, waiting for donors, long before the ban was announced,” he said. “For purely humanitarian reasons, their appeal was granted.”  

Ona said the eight patients have undergone and passed all the medical legal procedures for kidney transplantation so the committee reconsidered their cases.

“Kidney transplantation is a complex thing,” he said. “We cannot ignore them just like that. But this (exemption) is not something to be abused. They were exempted for purely humanitarian reason.”

Dr. Ernie Vera, DOH’s Organ Donation Program manager, said the exemption is limited to the eight patients because they are the only ones listed in the national data bank for kidney transplant.

“They are the only ones listed there. I don’t think there are other patients who can be exempted,” he said.

DOH records showed that in 2006, a total of 690 kidney transplantations were performed in the Philippines.

Sixty-three percent of the patients were foreigners, mostly from Arab nations.

The National Ethics Committee is under the Philippine Board for Organ Donation and Transplantation (PBODT) created by the administrative order on organ donation issued by the DOH last March.

The PBODT issued a resolution banning foreign patients from getting kidneys from living donors who are not their blood relatives.

Technically, the resolution is not yet in effect because it has not been signed by the DOH executive committee and published in newspapers. – Sheila Crisostomo