Thursday, May 01, 2008 Foreign transplants suspended
HEALTH Secretary Francisco Duque III ordered eight hospitals, two in Cebu, to stop kidney transplants on foreign patients.
The hospitals were found to have violated the government rule limiting foreign kidney transplants to 10 percent of the annual operations.
Department of Health (DOH) 7 stressed that operations in other units of these hospitals will continue and Filipino patients due for kidney transplantation will still be accommodated and treated.
Duque earlier announced that the government has decided to impose a “total ban” on foreign transplants.
Rampant sale
Reports say a lot of foreigners have benefited from local kidney transplants. He said this resulted to the rampant sale of organs by Filipinos, especially when the cost of transplant would be around P350,000 to P500,000.
Included in the list are two Cebu-based hospitals.
DOH 7 officer-in-charge and chief of the Technical Division Dr. Elaine Teleron said Duque’s office directly communicated with these hospitals, which are also subject for monitoring and renewal of licenses every year.
A monitoring team from Manila recently checked these hospitals. The reports were directly submitted to DOH central office.
Teleron noted that the two Cebu-based hospitals are new in kidney transplantation outside Manila.
Assured
However, she assured the public, especially Filipino patients due for kidney transplantation, that these medical institutions will continue to accommodate them and attend to them.
Prior to the cease and desist order, the DOH revised the national policy on living non-related organ donation and transplantation and its implementing structures through an administrative order.
The policy states that “there is a need to strengthen the guiding policy governing organ donors to curb the reported cases of ‘backdoor’ that currently defy ethical and medical standards in transplantation.” (NRC)
