By Mai B. Gevera

Davao City (24 February) -- Dr. Peter Bretan, a leading surgeon in California, USA, is back in Mindanao with his team of miracle doctors to bring hope to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients.

Bretan is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and at the same time Chief and Surgical Director of Transplantation at the Northern California Kidney Transplant Center. He is a specialist in renal transplantation, renal vascular, and laparoscopic surgery.

Performing some 100 renal surgeries a year, Dr. Bretan was fulfilled as a professional. But success did little to fill a void somewhere in his heart.

"When I joined the Rotary Club of Novato in 2000, I then thought of doing humanitarian thing that would meld with my career," he told the media in a press conference at the Medical Tower of the Davao Doctors Hospital Tuesday.

So he founded Rotaplant, a program that provides kidney transplants to patients who would otherwise die of ESRD.

Bretan and his team has been moving around developing countries, providing kidney transplants to needy patients at no cost.

Born of Filipino parents who migrated to California while he was in grade school, the 52-year-old Dr. Bretan said he decided that the Philippines would be the best place to start his humanitarian mission.

"Aside from extending help to Filipinos, I also find the country as my home, where my family relatives are."

Bretan sees the wide disparity between the Philippines and the United States in terms of kidney transplant development.

In the U.S., the average cost of transplant is $120,000 or more than P6 million. In the Philippines, one set of laparascopic transplants would only cost a patient P300,000.

"The Philippines has the cheapest kidney transplant cost. However, most Filipinos cannot afford such surgery because the money comes out of their own pockets," Filipino nephrologist Dr. Franklin Guillano said.

Bretan said in the U.S., the government pays for the people's dialysis treatments and even kidney transplantation.

"No one in the U.S. can pay $65,000 for dialysis per year," he said as he explained how comprehensive medical care programs had become an important part in the lives of Americans.

In the Davao region alone, a Philippine study on nephrology showed that out of 854 ESRD patients, only 122 underwent dialysis treatment.

"Two-thirds were not able to undergo such treatment, neither were they hospitalized for such disease. Most patients on dialysis also ran out of money in three to six months time which caused their death," Guillano bared.

Understanding the economic situation in the Philippines, Bretan led his Rotaplant team to the country last February 2004 for the first laparascopic removal of a donor kidney which was performed at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute in Manila.

The second Rotaplant mission was a concerted effort of the rotary Clubs from Tagum City and Davao. Four separate surgeries were successfully performed. A 22-year-old woman donated a kidney to her sister and another young 27-year-old Filipina donated a kidney to her brother.

Now back with a new medical mission, Rotaplant is giving to an ESRD patient undergoing dialysis treatment for four years.

Ronaldo Flores, a local pastor, was the beneficiary of a one-hundred-percent free laparascopic kidney transplant performed by Bretan and his team.