Hospitals seek licences to conduct organ transplants

The Ministry of Health has said several hospitals have started expressing interest to be designated as organ transplant centres following the enactment of the Uganda Human Organ Donation and Transplant Act, 2022.

“We are going to have the public and private hospitals doing it [organ transplantation]. Mulago Hospital is almost ready. But there are some private hospitals, which have also shown interest. For kidney transplant, Rubaga Hospital has applied, but we have not assessed [their capacity],” Dr Moses Muwanga, the assistant commissioner for clinical services at the Ministry of Health, said yesterday.

According to the Act, which was signed into law by President Museveni on March 15, the capacity of each centre should be assessed by the Uganda Organ Donation and Transplant Council. It is the council that recommends the centre to be designated by the Health Minister to do organ transplants.

“We have got 70 percent of the council members on board. Some have been appointed but they are yet to accept. The council cannot stop the process [of preparing the country for organ transplant],” Dr Muwanga said during an engagement with journalists in Kampala yesterday.

He added: “The council is composed of members who are former urologists, former surgeons, and lawyers. We pledged that the government is going to finance this for at least a year and each individual is supposed to cost a minimum of Shs45 million [for the transplant process].”

“The theatres for organ transplants are not these usual theatres of ours where women go and deliver --their instruments are extremely unique. The team of professionals are also trained to handle transplant patients right from the anaesthetist, the person who makes you sleep, and the nurses,” Dr Muwanga said.

According to the new law, for a facility to be designated as a transplant centre, it must have an Intensive Care Unit dedicated to transplant, specialised medical professionals such as transplant surgeons, anaesthesiologists and transplant nurses, and theatres for a donor and a recipient among others.

Prof Frank Asiimwe, a transplant surgeon at Mulago Hospital, said the hospital has the required facilities and the surgeons are ready to start doing the transplant under the guidance and support of foreign surgeons.

“Ugandan surgeons are not yet ready but Uganda is ready. We want to have organ transplants on Ugandans (that is already happening), in Uganda (that is what we want to achieve), by Ugandans. The surgery being done by Ugandans shall be achieved eventually,” Prof Asiimwe said.

He added: “We have a team that has been training doctors in Mulago [on transplantation] since 2014. They are the same people that will come and work with us in Uganda.”

Dr Muwanga said it is the government that will pay the foreign surgeons who will come to support doctors at Mulago Hospital.

He, however, said some form of transplantations such as “corneal transplant and skin transplant” have been going on even before the law. The cornea is the outermost clear layer of the eye. He said the law would give better guidance.

Both Prof Asiimwe and Dr Muwanga said no transplantations or harvesting kidneys for transplantation have been happening in the country, as alleged by some people who claimed their organs were stolen for transplantation. They said the law prohibits the sale of an organ by the donor and also the purchase of the same.

Dr Muwanga said doing organ transplants locally would reduce the cost incurred by Ugandans in foreign countries by 50 percent.

Requirements for designation

- Intensive Care Unit dedicated to transplant

- Specialised medical professionals such as transplant surgeons

·   Two adjacent theatres for donor and recipient

·   Organ support unit and radiology and imagin

· 24-hour laboratory services doing tests required for transplant

· Valid operating licence