Low-cost kidney transplants in Kenya

Low-cost kidney transplants in Kenya

By JOY WANJA Posted Wednesday, January 13 2010 at 21:56

Patients with kidney failure were on Wednesday handed a lifeline after Kenya’s largest referral hospital introduced low-cost transplant.

In a new partnership with an international drug company, Norvatis, and a team of Spanish doctors, Kenyatta National Hospital would also provide drugs to the patients at a subsidised rate. “The project will discourage medical travels to other countries,” Dr Charles Kabetu, the hospital’s acting chief executive said.

According to Dr Anthony Were, the head of the renal unit at the hospital, 142 patients are currently on dialysis, with 110 of them in need of kidney transplants. Dialysis is the removal of the body’s impurities from the blood using medical equipment when the kidneys are unable to do so.

The first kidney transplant in the country was done at Kenyatta National Hospital in 1978, but it was not until 1988 that the procedure became available on a regular basis. Dr Were says that the hospital performed two such procedures last year and hopes to increase them to 100 by the end of the year following the new partnerships.

At Kenyatta hospital, pre-transplant analysis and the transplant operation costs about Sh520,000. In the partnership, doctors from Basel, Switzerland, will team up with their local peers to perform the transplants.

Pilot phase

After the pilot phase, the pharmacy will provide medication to patients at a reduced cost. “Under the new partnership, the patients under the programme will access medicines at a cost of Sh30,000 per month,” Dr Kabetu said.

While it costs a dialysis patient Sh4, 500 at KNH per session, seeking an alternative option would mean going to private hospitals where the cost is much higher. Spanish medics Fredericho Oppenheimer and Antonio Alcaraz are in the country on a two-day observation tour.

March 8 to 12 has been set aside as the Renal Transplant Week at the hospital and eight kidney transplants are scheduled to be performed.

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/841708/-/vpahhw/-/