Kidney donors continue to live active, healthy; doc cites Ramos

Kidney donors continue to live active, healthy; doc cites Ramos

By Germelina Lacorte
Inquirer Mindanao
First Posted 15:03:00 07/11/2010

Filed Under: Health, Medicines

DAVAO CITY, Philippines — To prove that donating one's kidney will not prevent one from leading a normal life, a kidney doctor here cited prominent personalities who have been living long and healthy lives even after one of their kidneys was removed.

Dr. Franklin Guillano, the secretary of the Mindanao chapter of the Philippine Society of Nephrology, cited the cases of former President Fidel V. Ramos, whose kidney was removed after he acquired an infection during his training in West Point many years ago; and of Senator Bongbong Marcos who donated a kidney to his father, the late President Ferdinand Marcos.

Guillano said there was nothing wrong about donating one's kidney to patients who needed them because a healthy person could live on just one kidney, he said in a Kapihan here on Friday.

“It has been a medically accepted fact that a person’s other kidney is a spare one,” he said.

“While both of the kidneys of a person with a kidney disease tend to shrink, a healthy person only needs one,” he added.

But he said organ donation has become a “taboo” in the country because people have equated it with organ sale.

Groups and other medical practitioners have opposed the plan to lift the ban on foreign nationals accepting Filipino organ donors, saying this will open the floodgates to organ sales in the Philippines.

Health Secretary Enrique Ona, the former chief of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, earlier expressed support for regulation and strict monitoring, but not a ban on Filipino organ donations to foreign nationals.

Since 2008, the Philippines has been imposing a ban on foreigners accepting organ donations from Filipinos, after reports about thriving sales of organs from the Philippines surfaced.

Guillano, however, said he would leave it to the hospital ethics committee— composed of priests and representatives from the religious and the academe, doctors not involved in organ transplant —to decide on the best thing to do.

“But as a transplant practitioner, I have my biases,” he said.

“Our primary concern is to save the patient, no matter who he is,” he said. “I still believe that a kidney transplant is still the best option to save a patient with a kidney disease.”

He also cited a study made by the New England Journal of Medicine, saying that kidney donors even tended to live a much longer and healthy life than those who still had both kidneys.

“Maybe, it's because only healthy people are allowed to donate a kidney,” he said. “Unless you're healthy, you'll be disqualified (from donating),” he said.

He added that it would be safe to donate a kidney for as long as the right procedures were followed.

“Before anyone can donate a kidney, a series of tests are performed to ensure that the donor is 100 per cent healthy and risk-free,” he said.

He also said that kidney diseases have been one of the top 10 killer diseases in the country. Most of those who died of cardiovascular diseases have been diagnosed with kidney failure. He said that more than 8,000 people nationwide who have started dialysis were “just the tip of the iceberg.”

He said lots of people with chronic kidney diseases might not even know about their illness.

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