Kenyan doctors weigh on harvesting kidneys from the dead to save other patients

Kenyan doctors weigh on harvesting kidneys from the dead to save other patients

A Kidney transplant procedure

Kenya may soon have a legally adopted organ donation programme that has rules to guide the process and expand the possible sources of donor organs.

The Kenya Tissue and Transplant Authority has formed a National Tissue and Organ Transplant technical committee which is drafting regulations, standards and guidelines that will allow such an organ donation program.

This program will see organs harvested from dead patients to save lives of patients whose organs have failed.

Kenya Tissue and Transplant Authority acting director Dr. Nduku Kilonzo says this will see a shift from perennial reliance on family donation practices which have proved to be unreliable.

Speaking at the four-day Kenya Renal Association conference in Mombasa, Dr. Kilonzo said the country is facing a shortage of kidney donors leading to many Kenyans losing their lives and some incurring huge medical bills weekly in undergoing dialysis.

“We have to find a way of getting kidneys and other organs from people who have died. To do that we must have regulations. Kenyans must understand why we must do that, there are legal issues on who determines death, who does the transplant and who gets the organs once it’s done,” Dr. Kilonzo said. 

The authority has formed a National Tissue and Organ Transplant technical committee and is in the process of drafting a number of regulations, standards and guidelines that will allow an organ donation program and see kidneys from dead patients harvested to save lives of patients whose kidneys and other organs have failed.

“Organ allocation criteria is on who is due for the next available organ. We must have regulations on facilities and this looks at which hospital can do a transplant and can transplant a human being organ to another because we want people who are competent and certified,” he said. 

“It’s a very nice proposal, it’s an innovative proposal that’s where Kenya should be, indeed the World Health Organization is advocating for improvement in donation practices and one of the practices the country should embrace is a disease donation programme, because any country should be having sustainability in the way we offer services,” added Kenya Renal Association President Dr. John Ngigi. 

According to the authority, cases targeted for the donor program are patients who may have died in an accident or have been recently removed from life support in hospital with the consent of the family. 

The regulations are also focusing on standards and unlawful organ harvesting and conflict of interest.

By December this year the draft bill will be ready, with the team asking parliamentarians to support their move.

“When this country started doing aggressive kidney transplant 10 years ago, we did not foresee a situation where we will have problem of donors, because we are having fewer donors, and many of our donors are unhealthy, diseases that are running in families and also blood group, so we need to get another pool of donors and that pool is for people who are not alive,” Dr. Ngigi adds. 

He says Kenya is grappling with a shortage of kidney donors, a situation brought by underlying factors like health complications, mis-matching blood groups and family related diseases. 

The cost of dialysis sessions and cost of other infections currently stand at Ksh.76,000 a month.

Doctors say this will be reduced to Ksh.42,000 shillings per month when patients undergo a successful kidney transplant. 


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