Kidney specialists on Tuesday assailed the new Philippine government policy on kidney donation, saying it will only worsen the problem of rampant illegal sale of kidneys and other human organs mostly to rich foreigners. The Philippine Society of Nephrologists (PSN) said the Administrative Order issued by Health Secretary Francisco Duque last week will only lead to more illegal kidney transplants as the new guidelines effectively removed limitations to the number of organ transplant operations allowed for foreign recipients. “We want the order revoked,” Lyn Gomez, PSN president, said during a press conference. She said the order, which created the Philippine Network for Organ Donation and Transplantation to oversee kidney donations and transplants, will not work since Philippine hospitals are simply not set up to screen highly-motivated donors and recipients. For his part, Dr. Leonardo de Castro, program director of the University of the Philippines (UP) Bioethics Program, said that while the new policy says that “kidney transplantation is not part of medical tourism, the opportunity for foreign patients to come to have their transplants done in the Philippines remains.” Under the previous Department of Health (DOH) policy, hospitals were asked to limit the limit the number of foreign kidney transplant patients to just 10 percent and give preference to Filipino patients. But De Castro said this was never followed in many private hospitals. Only the government-managed National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) complied with the 10 percent ceiling on foreign patients, De Castro added. The new policy removed the 10 percent ceiling altogether. Dr. Gene Nisperos, secretary general of the Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD), echoed De Castro's concerns, saying the new DOH policy “may expedite transplants of foreign patients,” which would then worsen the organ trade. He said the Philippine government is actually aggressively promoting the Philippine Medical Tourism Program wherein member hospitals offer kidney transplants. Nisperos said the new DOH policy may “open the floodgates” to more foreign transplant patients. Data from the Renal Disease Control Program of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute shows that for the year 2006, in 41.4 percent (286 of 690) of transplantation operations, the recipients were foreigners. Only 404 of 690 kidney transplant recipients were either pure Filipino or of Filipino descent. The rest were foreigners. Of this number, the biggest number of recipients - 107 patients - came from Saudi Arabia and other Mideast countries. Nisperos noted that the Philippine government is now marketing medical tourism, including organ transplants, in many countries. De Castro said the Philippine government's move was apparently taken in light of developments on organ donation around the world. He noted that in India, Pakistan, and China, new laws have been passed to control the selling of organs. If these new laws are able to limit kidney transplants in these countries, De Castro said the Philippines could end up receiving more foreign transplant patients. He said he has received reports that commercial kidney brokers are now looking at the Philippines as the alternative venue for their clients. __
