After eight months, PIMS resumes kidney transplant

Gilgit woman undergoes successful operation after organ donated by her daughter

ISLAMABAD: After a gap of about eight months, kidney transplant operations resumed at the top tertiary care hospital of the federal capital on Thursday.

A five-member team of doctors, led by Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) Nephrology Chief Dr Sohail Tanveer operated successfully on a woman from Gilgit.

The organ donor was the woman’s daughter and doctors reported that both the mother and daughter were healthy.

Pims Executive Director Dr Amjad Mahmood Raja, had last year decided to start the process of treating kidneys for free. As a result, three kidney transplant operations were then carried out within a month.

However, due to some internal and some technical issues, kidney transplant operations were halted in the hospital.

But following Dr Raja’s directives, operations resumed at the hospital.

Pims’ Nephrology Department official Dr Khawar Sultan confirmed to Daily Express that kidney transplants had resumed with a successful operation.

He further said that the team of five doctors and surgeons who conducted the transplant included Dr Tanveer, General Surgery Dr Tanveer Khaliq, and Urology Chief Dr Musharraf Ali Khan and Dr Tariq Abdullah.

Dr Sultan added that a patient has to pay a total of Rs20,000-Rs25,000 in associated costs during a transplant operation, adding that the operation itself is conducted free of cost.

By comparison, he said that a similar operation at a private facility costs between Rs1.2 million to Rs1.4 million.

He added that they plan to conduct further transplant operations at the hospital without specifying whether the issues which brought the operations to a halt the last time had been definitively resolved.

The only hiccup which Dr Sultan identified was the availability of sufficient and appropriate kidney donors.

Explaining the process, he said that only blood relatives or spouse will be able to donate organs. Thereafter their blood and tissue culture tests will be carried out.

If these tests are clear, the ones who match first will be selected for the transplant operation. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2019.