Patients who need to undergo organ transplant will soon receive financial assistance from the Department of Health through one of its specialty hospital, the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

Under the Memorandum of Agreement recently signed by the NKTI and PCSO, patients who will qualify as beneficiaries can avail of the life-saving procedure with the assistance of PCSO through their individual Medical Assistance Program. The PCSO pays for the patient’s hospitalization cost, including medicines, medical, surgical, or blood supplies and diagnostic procedures.

“This endeavor would greatly lessen the burden of cost to the patients through an outsourced funding,” said NKTI Executive Director Dr. Jose Dante Dator.

The DOH said another successful simultaneous liver and kidney transplant was recently performed at NKTI.

The latest patient was a 54 year old, male, married and unemployed patient from Pateros, Metro Manila. He used to be a taxi driver but stopped upon onset of illness in July 2013. His wife is the family’s sole breadwinner. She works as an Auditor in one of the leading banking firms in the country.

The patient has been suffering from psoriasis for ten years and was maintained on Methotrexate which resulted to impairment of his liver and kidney functions. In November 2013, he was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and chronic kidney disease secondary to hypertensive nephrosclerosis.

Evaluation for the patient’s combined liver/kidney transplantation was started on December 10, 2013. He was approved for listing by the NKTI Liver Team and was put on the deceased donor waiting list by the PHILNOS on December 18, 2013.

A liver and kidney transplant became more imminent when he developed refractory ascites and increasing serum creatinine levels and worsening of his glomerular filtration rate. Refractory ascites is ascites that cannot be mobilized or the early recurrence of which (i.e. after repeated therapeutic paracenteses) cannot be successfully prevented by medical therapy.

A potential deceased donor came on July 6, 2014, which was case of a fall injury involving a 16 year old female patient, through the Human Organ Preservation Effort (HOPE).

On July 7, 2014, the NKTI transplant team did the simultaneous liver and kidney transplantation on this patient. NKTI has done about eight multiple organ transplants since 1988.

Press Release