After securing approval: Kidney institute to carry out first transplant in ‘days’

MTRA meeting holds onto KTH’s request for transplants pending fulfillment of requirements

PESHAWAR: After having been authorised, the Institute of Kidney Diseases (IKD) is expected to carry out its first kidney transplant over the next 10 days, officials privy to the matter told The Express Tribune on Friday.

“IKD has already been granted registration for carrying out kidney transplantation and we expect the first [operation] to be carried out within the next seven to nine days,” a senior health official privy to the developments at the third meeting of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Medical Transplantation Regulatory Authority (MTRA) said.

He added that the Rehman Medical Institute (RMI) has also sought registration to conduct liver transplants. This request, he said, had been granted by the MTRA, however, the hospital will be inspected after completing all the requisite formalities before it can finally go ahead with a transplant.

Furthermore, officials privy to the meeting stated that after registering with the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government, the RMI and the North West General Hospital (NWGH) will become the first medical institutions in the province which have been officially authorised to carry out renal transplants.

Similarly, the premier medical teaching institute in the province, the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH), has also moved its case.

However, the facility’s case was not approved since fails to meet basic requirements, particularly since some civil work there is still underway.

During that meeting of the K-P MTRA, held at the Health Secretariat with Health Secretary Abid Majeed in the chair, it discussed that KTH’s request will be revisited once it fulfills all the basic requirements for renal transplantation.

The meeting also approved the amended rules for Corneal Transplant Centres to be registered under the MTRA, including recognised transplant centres as well as recognised transplant surgeons registered with the MTRA.

Corneal Transplant Centre, the MTRA decided, must have a committee for evaluating transplants which will be notified by the MTRA apart from having a transplant coordinator. Moreover, the transplant centres must have their own ‘eye bank’ (corneal storage facility) with its linkages nationally and internationally registered with MTRA.

According to an official privy to the meeting, transplant evaluation committees should include transplant surgeon, ophthalmologist or surgeon eligible to conduct a transplant but not conducting transplants at the same hospital.

The registration fee was also revised and set it as per the practices of the Federal Human Organ Transplant Authority (HOTA).

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2018.