NKTI calls for help as its COVID-19 facility reaches full capacity

MANILA, Philippines — The National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) has appealed for help as its facility for patients suffering from the coronavirus disease 2019 has already reached its full capacity.

“For many weeks now, our COVID-19 facility has reached 100 percent occupancy and dialysis patients from other centers keep flooding our already congested emergency room,” NKTI executive director Dr. Rose Marie Rosete-Liquete said in an open letter on Monday addressed to “all those concerned.”

Liquete said that for some time, the hospital’s COVID-19 tents have decongested the emergency rooms, but it has to be dismantled at the onset of the rainy season.

“The emergency room remains congested. The hot zone is full. This is a call for your help to solve the situation,” she said in her letter.

According to Liquete, the NKTI’s doorstep is every day “flocked by patients who have nowhere to go for their dialysis treatment.”

She attributed this to various factors: refusal of dialysis centers due to the patients being positive for COVID-19 or having its symptoms, and closure of dialysis centers due to depleted funds or resignation of nurses fearing the virus.

Liquete also said the NKTI has the most vulnerable patients, citing chronic renal patients with comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease and inflicted with COVID-19 who go to the hospital for treatment.

“Not one of the officials came when our tents bloomed to the maximum and scorched under the sun, and later, stormed by Typhoon Ambo. But we survived,” she lamented.

According to the NKTI official, the hospital’s manpower is already “dwindling” with a total of 174 healthcare workers who have contracted the virus.

“We could have threatened to close down our facility like other government offices, but we could not as almost all patients who come to the institute are dialysis patients. And a day or two of missed dialysis would mean death,” she added.

In her letter, Liquete urged the government to capacitate local government units and hospitals in Metro Manila to increase bed capacity for COVID-19 patients and increase dialysis stations.

The opening of free-standing dialysis centers for COVID-19 patients should also be encouraged or mandated.

Swabbing centers in the localities should likewise prioritize patients undergoing dialysis, with or without symptoms.

According to Liquete, it would be impossible to convert the hospital’s non-COVID-19 rooms to COVID-19 isolation rooms, since three non-COVID-19 wards were already closed due to lack of nurses, and that the hospital has other patients to attend to.

“The hospital ‘hotzone’ is already like a petri dish, steaming with COVID-19. We don’t want HCWs (healthcare workers) to cross from one area to another,” she explained.

She likewise called on the government to capacitate quarantine referral centers: the Jose Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center, Lung Center of the Philippines, and the Philippine General Hospital, so they can also accept patients who are suspects and probables, whether they are undergoing dialysis or not.

“Relieve NKTI of the burden of catering to COVID-19 patients to keep our mandate, vision, and mission,” said Liquete.

According to Liquete, an average of four to six healthcare workers at the NKTI test positive to COVID-19 every day.

“We may have to close our emergency rooms. Our healthcare workers deserve quarantine breaks, a livable accommodation, transportation, and more realistic allowances commensurate to their unconditional service,” she also said.

The hospital’s census for transplant has also “precipitously dropped.”

“Thus for those whose hearts we have touched, I hope our current situation will be addressed,” Liquete said.

“Many government facilities have donated to different facilities, one way or another. And while NKTI has practically knocked on all doors but still, our letters, our pleas, have not been fully answered,” she added.

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