![]() His staff said that he does not want to discuss it with the media. Despite repeated requests, Secretary Ona refused to sit down for an interview with GMANews.TV about the issue. Enrique Ona, was that he is opposed to a total ban on organ transplants to foreigners…," the doctors’ letter states, “which in effect will reopen the doors to organ trafficking and organ trade in the country." The letter is dated July 9, 2010. “One of the first pronouncements of the new Secretary of Health, Dr. GMANews.TV obtained a strongly worded letter written to President Noynoy Aquino by the Philippine Society of Nephrology, the national association of kidney specialists, protesting Ona’s appointment. Many doctors also oppose for ethical reasons the trade in body parts, calling it an exploitation of the poor. Before the ban, a 10 percent limit on foreign recipients of Filipino kidneys was blatantly violated. Those who support the ban argue that foreigners buy up kidneys that would otherwise go to equally desperate Filipino patients. Doctors who oppose the ban on foreign recipients say that transplants are the best way for those suffering kidney failure and needing dialysis to restore their quality of life. Candice MontenegroThose who have studied the kidney trade say that foreigners paid as much as $60,000 to doctors and middlemen for their live-saving transplants. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of foreign patients received kidneys from so-called living, non-related donors, usually impoverished men who were not always in the best of health when they gave up their spare kidneys.Ĭritics say Health Secretary Ona was the 'brains' behind the kidney trade in the Philippines that flourished in the years 20. Ona also happens to be one of the country’s pioneering kidney transplant surgeons and was a central figure in the country’s “kidney tourism" at its height from 2005 until the ban took effect in 2008. Enrique Ona that he was considering a review of the policy imposed by his predecessor, Dr. But in recent months, the medical community has been buzzing with talk about a possible lifting of the ban after a statement last July by Health Secretary Dr. The notoriety, coupled with lobbying by doctors opposed to what they deem an unethical practice, led to a ban in 2008 on foreigners flying to the Philippines for kidney transplants. This page requires a higher version browser This high concentration of donors is just the tip of a nationwide iceberg of kidney donations earlier in the decade that led to the World Health Organization (WHO) calling the Philippines a global organ trafficking hot spot, making it to WHO’s ranking of the top five kidney-trading countries in 2007. Rommel is only one of several hundred cases of kidney donors documented by government social workers in just three impoverished towns in a remote corner of Quezon province. ![]() He was promised P100,000, but he left the hospital, the government’s National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI), with only P80,000 and without his kidney, after various deductions that he was never told about. Parang ayokong magpakuha (I wanted to back out, but they already spent money on my tests so I was not allowed to go home.)," he said. “Nagastusan na raw ako, hindi na raw pwedeng bumalik, kaya hindi na ako nakauwi sa amin. After a month of being prepared in Manila for the transplant, like a cow being fattened, he wanted to back out. Five years later, Rommel is as poor as ever, the P80,000 he was given by the kidney broker long gone, leaving him just the scar and the bitter memory of being ripped off. Candice MontenegroNow Rommel’s spare is gone, transplanted into a foreigner who could afford the US$60,000 or so package deal for a kidney in the Philippines. Kidney donor Rommel Villanueva of Lopez, Quezon said he cannot go back to his construction job because he can no longer lift heavy objects.
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