NKTI exec: Satellite institutions, not relocation

MANILA, Philippines - Following a proposal to relocate specialty hospitals outside Metro Manila, an official of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) said relocating the NKTI is impractical because this would primarily entail uprooting hospital personnel.

In an interview last week, NKTI executive director Jose Dante Dator said the hospital and the Department of Health (DOH) are looking at putting up satellite institutions or “mini-NKTIs” instead of transferring the whole hospital.

“Basically, transferring NKTI will create a void in this area (Metro Manila).  So hopefully, it won’t be a total transfer,” he said when asked for his reaction on Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano’s proposal to relocate some government agencies, including specialty hospitals to outside Metro Manila to decongest the National Capital Region.

Dator said while the proposal is difficult, it is “not impossible” to achieved.

However, he said the primary concern is that relocation would affect doctors who “are also the same doctors practicing in big private hospitals.”

According to Dator, having mini-NKTIs is feasible since the hospital has trained many doctors all over the country.

“Since we opened in 1983, we have been training transplant surgeons. If you do a survey and if you look at the map of the Philippines, we practically have representatives from north to south… What can be feasible is we will provide satellite institutions,” he said.

There are five transplant centers in the country at present, including those Naga City, Cebu and Davao.