The physicians who have been performing kidney transplant surgery in Guyana since 2008 yesterday made a public appeal to Guyanese to become kidney donors, noting that persons can function normally with just one kidney.
Meanwhile, two patients who recently received kidney transplants and their donors are recovering “excellently”, the doctors said.
At a press conference held at the Balwant Singh Hospital yesterday, Dr Rahul Jindal said that the first patient who received his transplant was 53-year-old Arthur Bond and his kidney was donated by his 19-year-old son Uthandi Bond; he underwent surgery on March 7. The second operation was on March 8 where, Canada-based Guyanese, 47-year-old Pushpawatie Goolcharran got her kidney from her sister-in-law 45-year-old Omattie Jagbo.
He added that both of the kidneys are fine and the patients will not need dialysis; patients were seen by the team 6 months prior to the transplant where they were evaluated.
Bond’s son was discharged from the hospital yesterday and Jagbo and Bond will be discharged tomorrow. However, Goolcharran will remain for a few more days as she is still recovering.
Dr Jindal said this is his 12th visit to Guyana, noting that the transplant programme was first started in 2008. The team had since been coming once every 6 months but for the past year the team came every three months. He said the procedures were first done at the Georgetown Public Hospital but since last year they were moved to the Balwant Singh Hospital, where screening of the patients, seeing new ones and following up on them is being done. He added that both hospitals have been very cooperative and each time they visit more and more patients are being screened.
“We bring a whole team of nurses, physicians and operating room staff so gradually the programme has increased from a small operation to a very big operation,” he said.
At first the team did one transplant every six months, but it now does two every visit, and aims to do 10 transplants for this year and 20 transplants for next year.
Dr Jindal said “So it’s an incremental increase in the work and the reason why we are doing this is so the local physicians and nurses can get used to our work. We have also established ongoing communication with them and we talk to them regularly and email each other and also Skype once a month with the donors and recipients.”
The team also does peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis. Hemodialysis is where the blood is purified through a machine and peritoneal dialysis is where a tube is inserted into the stomach and the dialysis is done by putting in a special fluid that removes the impurities in the blood.
The team has also screened approximately 54 patients, but many of them have hypertension, diabetes or other chronic conditions. Of the patients that are screened every visit, 5 or 7 of them are selected for future transplant.
Jindal said that selecting a patient for a kidney transplant is a very complex procedure and they have to ensure that the patient is of good health and stable. The donor has to be living and that is a problem because there is a lack of awareness and many persons do not know that they can live normally with one kidney. He noted that earlier it was difficult but now it is becoming much easier as many persons are becoming much more aware and are coming forward to become donors.
He said that at this time 5 patients screened for future kidney transplants already have donors and they are gradually screening the donors to ensure the blood groups are compatible.
Jindal said the programme will run for a long time because there are physicians in the US who are willing to come and do the procedures and follow up on the recovery process. He added that the Government of Guyana through the Ministry of Health and the Balwant Singh Hospital have assured them the assistance help to sustain the programme in the long run. He thanked the government for facilitating the team’s work, although they are not doing the surgeries at GPH and for pledging lifelong medications for the patients, which is a huge commitment because the patients require very expensive medication for life.
Dr Dave Oliver, who is in charge of most the technical aspects of the team’s work, said his goal is train local physicians in his field so that they can take over from him.
Transplant surgeon Dr Steven Guy said he joined the team about a year ago and this year he brought along his son who is a college student and is studying to become a physician to garner the experience of saving persons lives. He added that the kidneys act as filters and if the filters stop working there has to be another way to filter the blood and that can be done using the various methods of dialysis, but the best way is to have a transplant.
US-based Guyanese George Subraj, who was instrument in starting the transplant programme, said that one of his sisters died at age 27 of kidney failure and his mother suffered with it for approximately 15 years. He said it is his pleasure to assist and bring awareness into the lives of those living with kidney-related diseases.
