IN A heart-warming display of maternal love, a 37-year-old woman of Lusaka last week donated a kidney to her 17-year-old daughter.
The donor and recipient, who want to remain anonymous, underwent the surgery at University Teaching Hospitals (UTH). The operation was conducted in partnership with American College of Surgeons.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, UTH held a kidney transplant camp where surgeons successfully performed two kidney transplants. Besides the mother who donated a kidney to her daughter, there was another 24-year-old man who donated a kidney to his older brother, aged 28.
In an exclusive interview, the lead transplant surgical team member and UTH consultant urologist, Victor Mapulanga, said Government signed a memorandum of understanding with American College of Surgeons under a skills transfer programme aimed at enabling Zambian surgeons to perform transplants independently in the near future.
Dr Mapulanga said both the donors and recipients are responding well to treatment.
“While dialysis remains an alternative, a kidney transplant offers patients a better quality and longer duration of life. Zambia is emerging as one of Africa’s leaders in transplantation.
“The hospital is currently encouraging relatives to donate a kidney to their loved ones under our programme called Living Related Kidney Transplant. Donating a kidney to a relative or a loved one is the best gift you can ever give. I have witnessed true love during this camp: a mother gave the best gift to her daughter, and a sibling gave the most precious gift to his older brother,” he said.
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Dr Mapulanga said the hospital is currently grappling with the issue of patients failing to find donors.
“Most of our patients are failing to find donors, so maybe it’s something that we need to sensitise people about. We need to be good enough. When our relatives are going through chronic kidney disease, we should be willing to donate one of our kidneys to them. So far, these two are the ones we did because these are the ones that managed to find donors. We were able to do up to five, but only two managed to find donors,” he said.
Dr Mapulanga said a kidney transplant is a lasting solution for someone who has chronic kidney disease, saying the law in the country currently allows living related kidney transplant.
“By ‘living related’, it means the one who is receiving is receiving from a relative. Some people think we are getting kidneys from other people and giving them away or selling them. According to the guidelines, the minimum age at which one can donate a kidney is 18. We don’t allow someone who is younger than 18 to donate, but the recipient can be any age,” he said.
He said that to send a single patient abroad for a kidney transplant, Government would spend about US$30,000, and that by conducting the procedures locally, the country is achieving substantial savings while building its own capacity.
“First of all, the US$30,000 is just for the operation before you add these other tests, and then you need to transport three people going and coming back, and you need to keep these three people in a hotel for about two months. Those were the costs for Government,” he said.
Dr Mapulanga said among the major causes of kidney disease are glomerulonephritis, primary kidney disease, diabetes, and hypertension.
– Zambia Daily Mail
