Igbeaku Orji 
A kidney specialist and transplant nephrologist at the Federal Medical Center (FMC), Umuahia, Dr. Chimezie Okwuonu, has identified increasing financial requirement, equipment and absence of qualified medical personnel to be among the greatest challenges to transplant and treatment of kidney diseases at the hospital. He explained that in addition to financial constraints, unavailability of machines and kidney donor issues, brain drain had also hit the programme with the result that two of the five surgeons which the programme had at inception have migrated for greener pastures.
Speaking during the 5th anniversary of the Kidney Transplant Programme in the hospital, Dr. Okwuonu said that the financial requirement of N9 million was becoming unbearable for patients and called on governments and other organisations to assist patients to have successful transplants. Dr. Okwuonu said the FMC Umuahia was the only Kidney Transplant Center in the South East with 10 transplantations and 70 per cent success within the period under review and consequently called on patients to seek early treatment. He said it was regrettable that patients with as much as N5 million could not have a transplant.
“The main purpose of our gathering here today is to celebrate the success we have achieved, enumerate our challenges and discuss the way forward. And we have seen that we have been able to perform 10 kidney transplantation with 70 per cent success within this five years, which is comparable to what we have in India, America and the United Kingdom (UK).
“In terms of our challenges we have identified financial challenges on the part of our patients from obtaining a kidney transplant programme. We saw from our data that we have patients that have N3 million but they were not able to afford a transplant, even with N4 million and N5 million because the cost of our transplant programme is N9 million with a breakdown of N7.5 million for the surgery and N1.5 million for the tests that are required. According to Dr. Okwuonu, the programme was considering the way forward with a plan to batch the patients together to reduce the cost on the patients.
In his remarks, the Chairman Medical Advisory Committee, CMAC, FMC, Dr. Ugochukwu Onyeonoro, assured that the hospital management would support the transplant programme with drugs, machines, training and finance just as the Director of the Kidney Transplant Programme, Dr. Anosike Erondu, stressed the need for a Foundation that could subsidise the cost for the patients. Two of the kidney transplant patients, Mr Peter Enyioma and Elijah Chikwendu testified to the success of the Programme saying transplant was better than dialysis.
