Senator Risa Hontiveros renewed her appeal to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) to continue providing free treatment for dialysis patients.
Each patient, she said, needs a total of 156 dialysis sessions for a complete year of treatment.
“We need to continuously help dialysis patients, especially now that we have not yet fully recover from the effects of the pandemic,” she said.
She stressed the government should ensure that they can get all dialysis sessions for free in 2022,” said Hontiveros.
The senator is working hard to ensure that dialysis patients are
spared from shelling out around P12,000 weekly for dialysis sessions.
The cost is on top of their other expenses. To recall, PhilHealth increased the number of dialysis sessions to 144 in November 2020 to help patients cope with the pandemic. The following year, Hontiveros filed Senate Bill No. 2053 or the “Free Dialysis for Senior Citizens Act of 2021” to ensure that seniors would get 144 dialysis sessions for free.
However, as the pandemic went on, it became evident that it wasn’t just seniors who needed help.
Thus, Hontiveros, along with other concerned groups, appealed to PhilHealth to ensure that dialysis patients of all ages would get 144 sessions for free in 2021. PhilHealth heeded the appeal.
At present, Hontiveros is also urging the Department of Health (DOH) to intensify its campaign for health promotion and disease prevention, including the early detection of possible renal problems in children. Macon Ramos-Araneta