A DIALYSIS center run by the Manila City government has been acclaimed by a UN body as a model public-private partnership project.
Manila City Hall last Saturday announced the city has been invited by the UN Committee on Innovation, Competitiveness and Public-Private Partnerships to a conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in September to present before 56 states the Manila Dialysis Center (MDC) project.
MDC, located at the Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center in Tondo, Manila, provides complete free dialysis to Manila’s poorest. It was inaugurated by Mayor Joseph E. Estrada in his first year as Manila mayor in 2014, and has since been his pet project. “We established the Manila Dialysis Center to provide free services for the poor struggling with kidney diseases. Here, as long as you are a Manileño, you are assured treatment services for free, and you are assured of succeeding sessions, which are also free. This provides patients with the treatment and also the peace of mind for them and their families,” Estrada had said earlier.
Since its inauguration, the center has provided over 15,000 free dialysis sessions via 26 working dialysis machines provided by Manila government’s private partner, B. Braun Avitum Philippines. Estrada hopes to bring these numbers up by acquiring more dialysis machines, with a year-end goal of 100 working machines in the center.
This is to combat the rapid growing number of persons with renal or kidney-related diseases in the country, or at least in the capital. As per the Philippine Renal Disease Registry, there were 32,077 patients on dialysis nationwide as of December 2015. Also, 14,954 Filipinos died from kidney diseases, such as nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis, in 2013, making renal diseases the top 8 cause of death in the country that year, the Philippine Statistics Authority said.
Data from the Philippine Society of Nephrologists showed the average price for dialysis in the country is P4,500 per session without government or Philippine Health Insurance Corporation subsidy. At two to three sessions per week, Manila’s indigents would have to spend P10,000 weekly, if not for the free services extended through MDC.
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