UNIPORT teaching hospital mobilises for take-off of kidney transplant centre

…As NLNG-financed facility almost ready

In the next four months, what may be Nigeria’s most modern kidney transplant centre may become operational at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH).

The work is said to be 85% completed and most equipment has been procured with assistance of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) to ensure state-of-the-art system in the UNIPORT Teaching Hospital.

As final touches are going on, the UNIPORT Teaching Hospital Authorities said the training was to begin with immediate effect so that the personnel would visit existing centres in Nigeria and learn their systems and build corrective measures where necessary.

Also, a team is outside the country downloading some of the best operationalities to be integrated into the UPTH centre to make it one of the best in the World but certainly the best in Nigeria.

BusinessDay gathered on Friday at the UNIPORT Teaching Hospital that a reliable Kidney transplant centre would gulp up to N3 billion.

According to Ngozi Ekeke, professor and head of the Kidney Team already assembled at UPTH, the transplant centre takes three theatres at same time – one for the donor, the other for treatment or surgery on the organ, and the last is for the receiver.

Ekeke made it clear “it is a complicated and expensive process which requires perfection at all the stages.”

Briefing newsmen during the June 2024 edition of the Hospital Round, Datonye Dennis Alasia, a professor and chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, UPTH, said the entire hospital needed to be apprised of the stages of takeoff.

He also said the medical team, the prospective patients, and the support services providers needed the mobilization.

The centre began in 2010 but the NLNG was said to have boosted the effort in 2015, and now, the centre is almost ready.

By 2020, Nigeria had about 15 kidney transplant centres which had performed 700 transplants, according to the Nephrology Association at that time.

The UPTH centre was expected to be one of them but delay and disruptions which are common with Government projects must have pinned it to the ground till the present effort by the management to get it off the ground.

Kidneys are said to remove waste products from the body, maintain balanced electrolyte levels, and regulate blood pressure.

According to Ekeke, one can function well and carry an individual through in life, thus making it good for one to donate a kidney to someone else.

He said the UPTH centre was not keen on doing commercial donor transplants but would manage the ones given free especially by relations.

Each team lead stood out during the hospital round to explain their work in the process of kidney transplant.

The legal team showed how the team would act to comply with the laws, but admitted that the law had not been passed yet at the National Assembly.

The finance team showed how they would work to make payments and funds readily available because the centre would operate at global best levels.

They said the centre would operate payment centralization system so relations of patients would go to different places to pay for the different services that would be required to carry out an operation.

The need for constant power supply was made as a point, too.