Health groups warn of legalization of kidney market
Medical practitioners and health workers are calling for the revocation of a new Department of Health (DOH) order that aims to stop kidney trafficking.
The Health Alliance for Democracy or HEAD said Administrative Order 2008-0004 may actually lead to the legalization of the organ trade under the pretext of “management and regulation.”
Dr. Gene Alzona Nisperos, HEAD secretary general, said the DOH order contains contradictory provisions and that it does not clearly define the terms “kidney sale” or “trade and commerce of kidneys.”
The same concern was raised by the Philippine Society of Nephrology (PSN), which cited loopholes in AO 2008-0004.
“We must scrutinize not only what is written but also what is not written in order to arrive at the real nature of this order,” Nisperos said.
This developed as Health Undersecretary Alexander Padilla announced the temporary suspension of kidney transplants to foreigners.
“Right now, all transplantations on foreign patients are deemed suspended,” Padilla told a news conference. “Kidney transplantation is not part of medical tourism.”
HEAD’s Nisperos pointed out that the order mentions the term “gratuity” but is not clear on what the DOH regards as “acceptable compensation” for the donor.
“The lofty guiding principles and general policy statements contained in the DOH order are rendered inutile in the absence of clear-cut parameters and limits that should be set in very clear, unconditional terms to actually stop the trade of kidneys and other human organs,” Nisperos said.
He added that the AO delineates not only between Living-Related Donors (LRDs) and Living Non-Related Donors (LNRDs) but also between “Directed Kidney Organ Donor” and “Non-Directed Kidney Organ Donor.”
According to Nisperos, 90 percent of kidney transplants in the country are from living donors, of which 68 percent are from LNRDs.
“This is a whopping 56 percent increase from 2002 and confirms the overwhelming demand for organ donors,” Nisperos pointed out.
He also claimed that in the order, the term “Directed Kidney Organ Donor” is defined as “someone who has no specific recipient in mind to donate to equitably allocated recipients.”
But he said Directed Kidney Organ Donor essentially means that the donor designates the recipient, which further cultivates a pro-rich bias.
The new AO, Nisperos added, has even spawned the creation of agencies like the Philippine Network for Organ Donation and Transplantation or PhilNETDAT, to enforce what he called the illegal organ trade.
In a statement read at a press briefing, PSN denounced the exploitative nature of the administrative order.
“This will open the floodgates for more exploitation of poor Filipino donors by foreign recipients considering that in the years 2002 to 2005, when a 10 percent cap for transplants to foreigners was supposed to have been enforced, more than 400 kidney transplants from local donors to foreign recipients were performed, a number that is likely to be an underestimate because of incomplete reporting from some hospitals,” the PSN statement, read by the group’s president Dr. Lynn Almazan-Gomez, said.
Amihan Abueva, regional coordinator of the group Asia Against Child Trafficking, said the AO makes the
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