Muhimbili flying higher

The top hospital’s kidney transplant surgery rate is now five a month MUHIMBILI National Hospital (MNH) announced yesterday that it now had the capability to conduct five kidney transplant surgeries a month.
 
The announcement comes close on the heels of the second successful kidney transplant on four patients. The feat was accomplished in collaboration with experts from BLK Supper Specialist Hospital of India.

Announcing the plan, the MNH Executive Director, Prof Lawrence Mseru, said the hospital’s short-term plan was to conduct five surgeries a month. He explained that the fa- cility had been fully geared to conducting the sophisticated surgery procedures since November, last year.

“We are happy to announce that MNH can now conduct surgeries on a more regular ba- sis, and so, Tanzanians should trust us.

Our specialists are well trained and are capable of conducting complicated medical surgeries,” he noted.

Currently, over 200 patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) are undergo- ing dialysis at MNH, as there are more than 400 patients in other health facilities across the country.

Prof Mseru added that they were in the process of creating an environment for MNH specialists to conduct such surger- ies without medical back-up or consultations from abroad. “In the future, our specialists will be able to do this job on their own.

We will no longer need to ask for assistance from other doctors abroad,” he said. Elaborating, Prof Mseru said MNH would allocate one floor in the newly designed intramural private practice build- ing exclusively for kidney transplant services.

“We are going to allocate a floor in the new building for this service,” said the MNH boss. He said the construction would be completed in18 months’ time, and that the government had already disbursed sufficient funds for the purpose.

He said the new building would enable MNH conduct kidney transplant surgery every week. Delving deeper into the medical mission, he said after last year’s surgery, the plan was to conduct the same procedure to five patients, but one was omitted after being diag- nosed with complications.

“After our last surgery on November 21, 2017, we noted several physical infrastructure weaknesses, prompting us to address them before conducting another surgery. Delight- fully, the four patients are now doing well,” he explained.

A nephrologist at MNH, Dr Onesmo Kissanga, said although kidney transplant was optional, specialists would still ponder on effective interventions to ensure that Tanzanians led healthy lives. “Ten per cent of the population worldwide is affected by CKD while in Tanzania 6.8 per cent peo- ple are affected and millions die each year because they do not have access to afford- able treatment,” he said.

The Director and Senior Consultant at the Department of Nephrology and Renal Transplant at BLK Super Specialty Hospital, Dr Sunil Prakash, said it was crucial for the hospital to have a two-year roadmap for maintaining the team that had received training on kidney and body parts transplant.

He said there should be regular training for the doctors for them to gain more confidence and start conducting such surgeries without assistance from BLK.

The government was spending over 83m/- for sending one patient and an escort donor to India for a kidney transplant, including medical care and transport. The same procedure cost only 21m/- at MNH.