(Continued from last Wednesday, June 4)
MANILA, Philippines?The government has neglected Filipino kidney patients?and there are hundreds of thousands of them. But it is bending policy to accommodate foreigners who are exploiting the poverty of Filipinos who sell their kidneys for a pittance.
Filipino patients need much less?dialysis treatments only?yet they?re still neglected by their own government.
As stated earlier, if your kidneys fail you have only two alternatives to stay alive: a kidney transplant or dialysis treatments three times a week. But a transplant costs from P1 million to P2 million, while a four-hour dialysis session costs an average of only P3,000. Except that dialysis treatments are for life, because the damaged kidney can never recover.
But how many patients can afford a transplant? Besides, there is the problem of where to get a donor. A healthy living relative is the best option, but sometimes there are simply no relatives healthy or willing enough to donate one of their kidneys.
There are Filipinos who are so poor they would sell one of their kidneys for peanuts. And because there are many organ traffickers masquerading as ?foundations? here, the Philippines has become notorious in the world for human organs trafficking. That is why foreigners come here for transplants.
?Cadaver donors? are a potential source of kidneys and other organs. Hundreds of thousands of humans die every minute. Imagine if their organs can be ?harvested? for transplantation. They will only be wasted anyway?rotting away in graves or burned in crematories. Except that the law and social mores do not allow the harvesting of an organ unless the patient himself or his relatives give their consent. And 90 percent of them don?t?because of religious and superstitious beliefs.
So maybe a law that would allow the harvesting of organs, provided the owner did not sign a will forbidding it, can save a lot of lives. And the owners might feel happier in heaven knowing that their organs have extended the lives of fellow humans back on earth.
But as I said, a kidney transplant is not the only way to extend the life of a person with kidney failure. There is dialysis. The machine takes the patient?s blood, removes the accumulated toxins and excess fluids in it, and returns it to the body. The machine does in four hours what the kidneys can do in 48 hours.
Except that at P3,000 per session, three times a week, the cost comes to between P40,000 and P50,000 a month, including medications, injections and regular laboratory tests. In two years, you will have spent for dialysis what you would pay for a transplant.
Except, again, life is not all that rosy after a transplant. Your lifestyle is restricted because you are prone to infections as you are given medications?for life?to suppress your immune system so your body will not reject your new kidney. Common ailments such as the flu become dangerous infections. So you have to avoid crowds and parties, can?t have pets, can?t visit friends in hospitals, and must be careful with what you eat. Some patients die of infections or complications after a successful transplant.
So what do you do if you have an active lifestyle or profession? Stick to dialysis?except that you can?t travel for more than two days to places where there are no dialysis machines. Traveling to modern cities with modern hospitals is no problem provided you make arrangements in advance.
But then, again, not many patients can afford the cost of dialysis. Many opt for twice a week sessions or less to save on costs. But optimum results are achieved only with thrice-a-week treatments. Still many patients make do with much less because that?s all they can afford. The government can help, but it doesn?t.
You would think that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would be more sympathetic to dialysis patients because First Gentleman Mike Arroyo himself underwent dialysis treatments when his kidneys failed after his heart operation. But she is not. Even the Malacańang Clinic is no big help. It is reputed to give free dialysis treatments, but the service is token. It is almost impossible to get a slot. I tried to help a poverty-stricken kidney patient to be treated there. A former presidential chief of staff helped, but the red tape was so long that by the time the call came for her to go to the clinic, the patient was dead. Since then, I have personally seen two other patients die because they could not afford the cost of dialysis.
PhilHealth and private insurance policies do not cover dialysis treatment because patients are not, technically, confined in a hospital?although the expense can be much more than the common hospital confinement.
And yet it is so easy and simple for the President?or Congress?to help them. With one stroke of the pen, she can include it in PhilHealth coverage or lift the tariff and taxes on dialysis machines, supplies and medicines. The sterilized supplies?needles, catheters, dialyzers, etc.?are all imported (and therefore expensive) and can be used only once. One machine costs about P1 million?and we need many more of them.
The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) donates ambulances to municipalities with no hospitals. (Where will the ambulances take the emergency patients?) The mayors and governors only use the ambulances to joyride in Metro Manila or to ship prohibited drugs from their areas to the cities. So why doesn?t the PCSO donate dialysis machines instead? It can help many more people that way, instead of the opportunistic local government officials.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque told the Kapihan sa Manila that he will make these suggestions. Let?s see.
