Garki hospital records first kidney transplant

Dr Nadey Hakim, transplant surgeon at London’s Hammersmith Hospital, and Dr Elijah Miner, chief medical director at Garki Hospital, led the surgical team which spent hours in a theatre to remove the left kidney of a 42-year-old man before transplanting into the donor’s 19-year-old son diagnosed with end-stage renal disease in a second theatre.Hakim described […]

Dr Nadey Hakim, transplant surgeon at London’s Hammersmith Hospital, and Dr Elijah Miner, chief medical director at Garki Hospital, led the surgical team which spent hours in a theatre to remove the left kidney of a 42-year-old man before transplanting into the donor’s 19-year-old son diagnosed with end-stage renal disease in a second theatre.
Hakim described the surgery as successful and “fantastic”. “Nice kidney,” he announced after it was removed.
It is the second kidney transplant he’s performed since December when he transplanted a kidney into a 20-year-old boy at View Point Hospital in Abuja.
A second donor gave a kidney for his friend of 35 years. The surgical team worked late into night to complete both surgeries.
Marathon surgeries
A total three kidney transplants were completed by mid-Sunday, and four more open-heart surgeries are scheduled at the hospitals over six days.
The cardiac surgeries will be conducted entirely by Nigerian doctors, said Dr Miner.
But Hakim was chosen to lead the kidney transplant because of his expertise-successfully completing over 2,000 organ transplants and authored papers on the subject.
Dr Miner defended the choice of Dr Hakim to lead the team. “It is difficult for our people to trust our own people. And our people don’t deserve any less [than to be operated on by renowned surgeons in the field]. It doesn’t matter whether he’s black or white.”
Up to 30 doctors, nurses and anaesthesists monitored the surgery streamed over the internet-along with journalists from major national media organisations providing live coverage on social media.
Beating cost
Garki is using the surgeries to show Nigerian doctors can handle delicate, cutting edge surgeries patients normally travel abroad for.
Like in an earlier surgery in July to close a hole in the heart of two-year-old Joanna-who had a congenital heart defect-Garki is having to bear some treatment cost.
“There is too much capital flight going out of the country. What we want is to start doing these things in the country and hopefully in time with government support we can even bring down the prices as low as some of the countries people go to,” said Dr Miner.
Kidney transplants in Nigeria cost up to N4.5 million-and experts estimate that managing chronic kidney disease with dialysis for 18 months alone could cost the same as a transplant.
But few of the patients lined up for surgeries at Garki are able to afford the full cost.
“Some are still expecting money from their places of work,” said Dr Miner. “We have written letters to them a long time ago but had very slow response. As of now, no government agency or parastatal where any one of these people work has committed even in writing to say they will support. Those that have provided a little bit of money has been out of benevolence of other people.”
A handful of kidney transplants have done in scattered teaching hospitals. But five years as a PPP, Garki wants to push ahead after three back-to-back surgeries.
Experts see increasing number of patients with kidney problems that progress to chronic kidney disorders in need of dialysis or a final option of transplant.
Hundreds of those who could afford it have gone through Dr Hakim’s operating table in the UK, but he feels they are better off getting their treatment at home.
“The cost of a transplant anywhere else is at least tenfold what you pay in this country,” he said after completing the third kidney transplant on Sunday.
“You have got a beautiful, rich country, with the most beautiful highways ever. You should be able to have the best hospitals in the world. Money is not an object. People come and work in Nigeria to earn money, so obviously you must have the money somewhere. But I think you should be selfish and use it for yourself instead of sending all those hundreds of thousands of pounds to the States or England to spend on other people.
“We can expand [the services]. I see no reason why we cannot perform ten transplants a month. It is more difficult to get a visa to come to Nigeria than to do the transplant.”