THREE cities in Mindanao will now be handling organ transplant for patients having Davao as the head office with satellite services in Cagayan de Oro and Zamboanga.
“Our plan is to create a Mindanao Transplant sharing,” said Dr. Antonio Paraiso, program head of Philippine Organ Donation and Transplantation Program (PODTP).
“We want to establish Cagayan de Oro as one of the organ procurement in Mindanao,” Paraiso said.
The medical institutions chosen as organ centers in the city are Capitol University Medical Center (CUMC) in Barangay Gusa and Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) in C.M. Recto Avenue and Corrales Street.
Cagayan de Oro, Davao, and Cebu are among the places with the largest population of people having dialysis, said Paraiso in a press conference held at the Philippine Information Agency – 10 office Tuesday afternoon.
In a recent study, there are 23,000 patients in the Philippines having kidney failure, he added, saying that the number one cause of it is diabetes, followed by hypertension (hypertensive nephrosclerosis), and glomerulonephritis, a renal disease.
Dialysis and kidney transplantation are treatments for severe kidney failure, also known as renal failure; stage 5 chronic kidney disease; and end-stage renal disease.
Paraiso explained that as the kidneys lose their ability to function, fluid and waste products begin to build up in the blood, and the options for survival rest in two options: undergo dialysis or a kidney transplant.
However, studies show that a kidney transplant is the most optimal solution in cases of renal failure for substantial reasons. One is that kidney transplant recipients end up having more energy than dialysis patients.
A kidney transplant can do 50 to 80 percent of the work of two functioning kidneys, while dialysis can only do 10-15 percent of one.
“This means that a transplant is less hard on a person’s system and which could translate to a patient’s quality state of being.” Paraiso said.
He said that kidney transplant recipients are able to go through life longer. “Excluding other factors, a kidney transplant poses less negative side effects on the body than dialysis, notwithstanding that he or she is more productive than the dialysis patient granting both have the same life span.”
With multiple sessions, dialysis treatments are able to cause several medical problems including anemia, high blood pressure, nerve damage, heart disease, and other infections.
Organ transplantation from a live donor is proven to have a 97 percent success rate, he furthered.
However, there are also organs that cannot be taken from the living person like the heart and the lungs, that is why Paraiso encouraged to “focus on the donation after life.”
This is also the reason why PODTP started a program to enlist potential donors to sign up and donate their organs when they pass away.
Donors are called lifelines and are given IDs with pictures and bio-data.
PODTP is encouraging more people to sign up as lifelines.
“The best source of organs is [from] those who suffered from accidents,” Paraiso said, adding that corpse donation success rate is 80 percent.
“The need for organ donation is very high… instead of giving ways for living donation, we are [encouraging] donations from the deceased,” said Marigold Simangan, transplant coordinator of Philippine Network for Organ Sharing (PhilNOS).
“It is fully understood. Organ donations keep us alive, literally,” Paraiso said.
Donation “is an extension of your own life and save another person’s life,” he added.
Dr. Paraiso also said that those who signed up as donors will become a priority recipient of an organ if time comes when they themselves will need an organ to survive.
PODTP has already broken three Guinness Book of World Records with the most number of people to sign up as organ donors through simultaneous registration, twice for the one-hour category and once for the eight-hour category.
Paraiso said that to be a donor “one must only possess willingness and goodwill.”