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Dr Moyo

Lovemore Meya Herald Correspondent
The country’s first kidney transplant unit is nearing completion with the technical team making last installations, a senior official has said.

Chitungwiza Central Hospital chief executive officer Dr Obadiah Moyo said the Laminar Air-flow — equipment that reduces the rate of infection in theatres — will be the last touch to the historic unit.

“We are moving at the correct speed because with the transplantation you have to be absolutely perfect in whatever you do. We want to create a full proof system so that we do not have any problems of patients coming back,” said Dr Moyo.

“We have established a partner, Apollo Group of Hospitals from India, who is very experienced and are also working with the International Society for Nephrology. “Our partner came to view the facilities and there are some recommendations made because they want to come to Zimbabwe and be able to set up a regional centre for kidney transplantation which is what we want.”

Dr Moyo said once the system starts functioning, kidney patients will no longer seek medical attention abroad. “We want to be able to stop people from going to India. “So the team will come here, we book all the patients locally and they carry out the transplant. We will also have post-operative management teams, doctors who will stay with the patients the same period that they would do in India.

“The team will discharge patients and carry out three operative work-ups, namely matching of the patients to make sure that they are the correct match with their donor, operations and looking after the patients,” he said.

Dr Moyo said their partner wants the institution to create an environment which is suitable for the operations. “The environment is what we are almost completing now as we are installing an apparatus called Laminar Air-flow that reduces the rate of infection in the theatres on patients who are going to be on immuno-suppression.

“We want to make sure that wherever patients are operated from is clean and there is no infection, once it is installed we get into the recruitment drive. We have a few patients who came forward to have the transplantations and we want to do it properly.”

Dr Moyo said they were happy to be the centre for such operations in the country and also thanked their sponsors for the huge project. “We always indicated that whatever is relevant for Zimbabwe to be able to do, it is just a matter of putting heads together.

“We have been supported greatly by Mimosa Holdings and they are the ones who have been supporting the renal programme to a large extent and the Ministry of Health and Child Care who gave the approval,” he added.