Historic feat

Instead of writing today about a case decided by our Supreme Court that serves as a useful guide in our daily life, let me write on another timely topic that is also significant and helpful especially to our health and even our life.

Recent news in the field of Medicine says that we just had the first successful liver transplant in our country by our own doctors. This is of course a very outstanding feat that will surely have a great impact in improving the health and prolonging the life of many Filipinos. As I read the news I cannot help but recall another significant achievement more than 42 years ago of doctors who graduated from the UST College of Medicine, specifically Dr. Romeo S. Abella and his colleague Dr. Domingo Antonio. Recalling this achievement is also very timely because UST is celebrating its 400th anniversary and thus may find it appropriate to recognize once more this achievement.

Dr. Abella is a dyed-in-the-wool Thomasian as he also finished his high school in UST with honors. After finishing his medical course, Dr. Abella took up his internship, residency and fellowship in kidney disease and hypertension in Loyola University Medical Center and Northwestern University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois where he assisted in prolonging the lives of dozens of terminal kidney patients when there were an estimated 100,000 deaths every year due to renal failure.

Coming back to the Philippines in 1966, Dr. Abella then only 31 years old brought the first kidney machine and established the first Artificial Kidney Center at the UST Hospital. The kidney machine keeps a kidney patient alive for an indefinite period while he is being prepared for a kidney operation hence it found greater use in the Philippines where the incidence of kidney failure is higher than in America.

Subsequently a kidney transplantation team was formed by the UST Hospital that first had to experiment on dogs for 13 months before attempting to perform a kidney transplant on human beings. Then on November 9, 1969, Dr. Abella and Dr. Antonio together with a team of doctors and nurses performed the first successful kidney transplant in Philippine medical history, using the artificial kidney machine. The team performed the operation on Estelita de la Paz, a 28-year-old former college student who was then suffering from chronic glomerulonephritis, a terminal disease. This feat gratified Filipinos because of the realization that they would then have greater chances of combating fatal diseases especially considering that the earlier attempt on kidney transplantation by another University group of doctors resulted in the death of the patient after one week due to uremic pneumonitis.

Thus in the same year, Dr. Abella was given the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) award by the Philippine Jaycees for that successful first renal transplantation and for his pioneering work in the use of the artificial kidney machine in the Philippines as well as his free services in UST Hospital. Then in 1971, on the 360th year celebration of UST, Dr. Abella was given a Special Award for that feat. This year on the occasion of UST’s celebration of its 400th anniversary, it would be fitting perhaps to further honor Dr. Abella by naming the UST Hospital Artificial Kidney Center after him.

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