A human kidney (Unsplash)

Davao City 1st district Rep. Paolo Duterte has led the filing of a bill that requires all government hospitals to set up dialysis wards and provide free treatment to poor patients.

“The cost of medical treatment for kidney disease remains exorbitant—beyond the reach of ordinary patients," Duterte and the other authors of House Bill (HB) No.7841 said in a statement Tuesday, June 6.

June is National Kidney Month.

"CKD 5 (chronic kidney disease stage 5) can be treated with kidney transplantation or renal dialysis. However, while kidney transplant is a definitive treatment, the low levels of organ donations, lack of infrastructure, and its high cost makes dialysis as the most viable option for renal patients,” the authors said.

However, dalysis facilities remain limited in public hospitals, resulting in long lines for poor CKD patients seeking treatment for this dreaded disease.

It is for this reason that they filed HB No.7841, which, if enacted, orders all national, regional and provincial hospitals to establish, operate and maintain a dialysis ward or unit within a period of two years. These medical facilities are required to provide dialysis treatment to indigent patients free of charge.

Benguet lone district Rep. Eric Yap and ACT-CIS Party-list Rep. Edvic Yap penned the measure along with Duterte.

A dialysis session costs around P2,000 to P5,000. This means that a patient needing this treatment thrice a week would have to shell out P6,000 to P15,000 a week, or P24,000 to P60,000 per month to be able to survive.

Citing the latest available data from the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI). The authors noted that CKD 5 has been identified as the seventh leading cause of death in the country, with 120 Filipinos per million population being afflicted with the disease each year.

The latest estimates place around 2.3 million Filipinos with CKD, Duterte said.

Duterte’s home city of Davao continues to rank third in the country with the most number of kidney diseases since 2017, according to reports quoting officials of the Philippine Society of Nephrology and the Davao-based Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC).