DOH moves to eradicate kidney black market

MANILA, Philippines – Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has signed an order aimed at eradicating a thriving black market in kidney sales by people desperate to do anything to ease the crush of poverty.

Duque said yesterday the order, which he signed two days earlier, called for the creation of a government board to oversee kidney donations and transplants, ensure proper care of donors and make more transparent and ethical a disturbing practice that has flourished in secrecy.

Kidney trading in the Philippines, involving dirt-poor people and prisoners who sell their organs for paltry sums to syndicates catering mostly to foreign clients, has been reported by the local media and reflects the depth of the nation’s poverty.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Society of Transplant Surgeons (PSTS) has imposed a “voluntary moratorium” on transplantation procedures involving foreign patients in support of the DOH that is coming up with the new administrative order on organ donation and transplantation.

PSTS president and director of the government-run National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) Dr. Enrique Ona said they have implemented the moratorium two weeks ago but have no idea on when it would last.

“Pending a review by the DOH of the old administrative order, we decided to voluntary implement this moratorium for the meantime. There are many questions regarding transplantations and we want matters cleared first,” Ona told The STAR.

The PSTS is composed of 18 members, the only transplant surgeons in the Philippines.

A TV network once featured a Manila slum in which dozens of men sported abdominal scars after giving up their kidneys.

The order seeks to provide a more benevolent image to kidney donations by prohibiting the payment of money as a precondition. It says donations must be done “out of selflessness and philanthropy” to save and ensure the quality of life of the beneficiary.

“We want to remove this black market,” Duque told The Associated Press. “We want to protect our already poor countrymen from abuse.”

Health Undersecretary Alexander Padilla said the order, which took more than two years to craft, was sought specifically because of numerous reports of foreign patients traveling to the Philippines in search of kidney donors.

“We don’t want to be known as the kidney capital of the world,” Padilla said.

A 1991 law only regulated transplants of kidneys and other organs from brain-dead donors.

One contentious issue was whether to ban foreigners from securing kidneys from local donors – a move backed by private advocacy groups to prevent the exploitation of the poor in Third World countries, Padilla said.

Authorities eventually decided against such a ban but made it difficult under the new order for foreign patients to obtain kidneys, he said.

The order prioritizes Filipino patients in the allocation of donated kidneys and prohibits their export to any other country.

About 10,000 to 12,500 Filipinos develop serious renal diseases each year and about half could be saved by kidney transplants, according to the health department. Only about a tenth of those who could have transplants actually do so because kidneys are in short supply and the procedures cost so much.

There are no existing statistics on the number of foreigners seeking local kidney donors. – Sheila, Crisostomo, AP