ABU DHABI // Hospitals are collating lists of kidney failure patients who could be candidates for transplants using organs from deceased people.
A law allowing transplants of dead people’s organs was issued last year by President Sheikh Khalifa and doctors hope it will be implemented next month.
“We will have a group of patients ready should an organ be available,” said Dr Nick Richards, chief executive and chief medical officer of Seha’s dialysis services.
The principle of donations from a dead person had been agreed on more than two years ago “but when it was declared, there still needed to be an agreement of what brain death was”, Dr Richards said.
“The new legislation will make it much clearer.”
The first and only kidney transplant from a deceased donor in the UAE was in 2013 – from a Saudi donor to a 23-year-old woman from Abu Dhabi.
The surgery was performed at Seha’s Sheikh Khalifa Medical City but other cases were held up while the medical liability law was drawn up. “The organ that came from Saudi Arabia was an exception but not the rule,” Dr Richards said.
He hoped donations from deceased patients would begin in “the next couple of months”.
But doctors and patients said that education was crucial.
The public, Dr Richards said, needs to know that “this works in many parts of world”.
“It’s about informing people and having discussions with the relative,” he said.
“There will be some people, like in Europe, whose relatives will refuse, and that must be respected.”
The country that carries out the highest number of kidney transplants is Spain – where 44 transplants a year are done per million of the population.
In the UK, the number is 34 for every million while in Abu Dhabi it is 17 for every million.
“We are half and almost all those were living donors,” Dr Richards said.
“We have large potential to benefit our patients and the health economy because transplantation is the treatment of choice.”
There are 1,100 people on dialysis in Abu Dhabi and 30 to 40 transplants are carried out a year at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City.
Naheel Suwan, a freelance education consultant and chairwoman of the Kidney Patient Network, is looking forward to the implementation of the law.
Her 19-year-old daughter is on dialysis and Ms Suwan said she had received three or four offers from donors, each of which were turned down.
“There is a large black market for illegal kidney trade and many countries now do it as a business,” she said. “This is haram and illegal.”
Unfortunately, Ms Suwan said, many people choose to take this route. “They come back with horrific complications and scars,” she said.
She hoped kidneys from deceased donors would help put a stop to the trade and benefit countless patients who do not have a matching related donor.
Dr Zubaida Alismaili, division head and consultant paediatric nephrologist at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City said that at least 70 per cent of the more than 1,000 patients in Abu Dhabi could benefit from the law.
“It’s important to understand that it’s not against religious teachings and laws and it’s -supported by countries like -Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey,” Dr Alismaili said.
The families of deceased donors, she said, also need to understand how much patients suffer, because “this will push them more to help”.
No details of how the donation process will operate have been revealed yet.
salnowais@thenational.ae