PHILIPPINES will soon have a group of professionals specialized in deceased organ donation after Erasmus Plus, a European education grant, selected Ateneo de Davao University (Addu) and University Sto. Tomas as recipients of a competitive educational program grant to develop a course on organ donation along with other universities in Southeast Asia.
During Tuesday’s press conference at Addu, Dr. Maria Theresa Bad-ang, the head of Organ Procurement Organization of Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC), said in pursuit to improve its transplantation and organ donation, both universities applied for the Organ Donation Innovative Strategies for Southeast Asia (Oddissea) program and were luckily included in the list.
This Oddissea program seeks to “set the basis of a network of highly qualified professionals, able to change policy and practice related ro donation, and thus support the establishment of a sustainable and efficient organ donation in SEA.”
In the Philippines, she said there’s no formal course that offers training program on organ donation, and with this, it will help transplant coordinators learn their craft and professionalize organ donation in the Philippines.
In Davao City, she said it will be a three-party agreement between Addu as the one who will give the course and Davao Medical School Foundation (DMSF) where the bulk of the faculty will be coming while the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) will now cater to the donors after the students will be able to do organ donation.
This is seen to further promote the deceased organ donation in the country to save more lives.
Bag-ang said in SPMC, they have around two to three start up dialysis every day. In fact, Davao City ranked third in the national survey of most number of patients on dialysis. Nationwide, there are about 35,000 patients on dialysis supported by PhilHealth.
“The only way that we could remove them from dialysis is to have transplant but without the donors, there will be no transplant,” she said, adding that the organ donors will be those patients declared legally and medically brain dead to help those in need of transplantation.
They already identified 35 doctors who came from the intensive care unit (ICU), from the Emergency Room, Palliative care, neurosurgery, the general surgery and the trauma to undergo online training provided by professional health experts from the University of Zagreb (Croatia), University of Bologna (Italy) and University of Barcelona (Spain). The classes will start from June 2019 and will end in October next year.
“That’s why it’s called organ donation innovative strategies for Southeast Asia, because these doctors are very busy in the ICU, ERs so they will not stay in the classroom so they used the cellphone. Ang cellphone don ang online class and then may face to face lang once a month,” she said.
Maria Paula Gomez, a medical doctor specializing in health management programs and organ donation and transplantation management from Spain, said they will train all the doctors so that Philippines will have a pool of professionals dedicated for deceased organ donation in the next two years.
“Ateneo de Davao University and Sto. Tomas Univesity in Philippines they will have post graduate diploma in Deceased Organ Donation. What it means that there will be health care professionals specialize in deceased organ donation. It is a gift of life. What Filipino needs is to have a specialized doctors transplant procurement managers (TPM), specialized doctors inside the hospital allowing the families and the donors for they wishes to become donors,” Gomez said.