KIGALI - King Faisal Hospital Kigali (KFH, K) will be conducting kidney transplants three times a year.

This was revealed yesterday by Dr. Joseph Ntarindwa, a nephrologist and consultant Physician at KFH,K.

He said the hospital had the capacity; both in terms of infrastructure and human resource, to follow up recent surgeries and carry out more kidney transplants as well as provide medication to patients who had kidney operations in India.

"KFH, K has two nephrologists, enough to conduct the operations three times a year. We are hoping to get a permanent surgeon so that the procedure can be conducted on a more regular basis,” Ntarindwa revealed.

"The kidney transplant programme at KFH, K has been successful so far because we believed we could do it. There is good political will from the government that has made us achieve what other countries have failed to achieve.”

He also revealed that due to legal restrictions, the hospital is not allowed to recruit kidney donors or connect patients with their donors, but is planning to create an office of non-medical staff to connect patients to donors.

Dr. Ntarindwa added that patients at the hospital who had not yet found donors were undergoing dialysis, a treatment that filters the patient’s blood through a machine.
Currently there are 25 patients at the hospital who are yet to get donors.

"We currently have seven Haemodialysis machines each with the capacity of serving 28 patients. When some donors’ kidneys fail to march with the patients, we keep the patients on dialysis until they get marching donors,” Ntarindwa said.

He added that dialysis is an expensive treatment which costs Rwf 1.2 million a month and most patients are sponsored by the government, but that the treatment would become cheaper in the next two years due to new research on the treatment.

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