DOH eyes ban on non-related kidney donors

MANILA, Philippines – After declaring a total ban on kidney transplants for foreign patients, the Department of Health (DOH) is now eyeing to prohibit Filipino patients from receiving kidneys from living donors who are not their relatives.

“We are moving in that direction,” said DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III in a press conference where he announced that foreign patients could no longer receive kidneys for transplant in the Philippines.

Duque said the Philippine Board for Organ Donation and Transplantation (PBODT) would be the one to decide when to impose the local ban. “We will have to convene with the board and we will have to depend on the wisdom of the board.”

The DOH executive committee is set to sign on Monday the PBODT resolution amending an Administrative Order dated March 3, 2008 to implement the ban on foreign patients.

Duque added that under the new policy, foreign patients are barred from receiving kidneys from living Filipino donors who are not their relatives by consanguinity or by blood.

“A foreigner is somebody who is not a Filipino. Even if a foreigner has been here for the last 20, 25 years but hasn’t changed his citizenship, no formal process of a change in citizenship, still he can be construed as a foreigner,” he said.

The total ban will formally take effect next month when the DOH shall have formulated and published the implementing rules and regulations.

But Duque said that since the Philippine Society of Transplant Surgeons had already imposed a moratorium on foreign patients, the ban is already in effect.

“There is also a de facto ban of the cease and desist order we issued to 14 of the 24 kidney transplant facilities,” he claimed. Eight of these hospitals have violated the 90/10 percent limit that they can allocate respectively for foreign and local patients up for kidney transplants.

Earlier, the DOH was pushing for a “life-for-life” system, where a foreign patient can undergo organ transplant in the Philippines, provided that he shoulders the transplant of a Filipino patient.

Duque added this strategy was scrapped on orders of Pres. Arroyo, who directed the DOH to follow a World Health Assembly (WHA) resolution promoting cadaveric donation.   – With AP