KATHMANDU: Bir Hospital today celebrated its first anniversary of kidney transplantation. The hospital successfully transplanted 16 kidneys in the span of one year.

Dr Pukar Chandra Shrestha, a transplant surgeon, said the Bir Hospital successfully completed 16 live donor renal transplantations, all the recipients being male. Nationwide, 2,800 patients develop renal failure every year, physicians said.

The kidney transplant service resumed in Bir Hospital and Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital last year. The first renal transplant was attempted in early 2004. There are a total of nine haemodialysis centres across the country.

“Kidney transplantation costs Rs 350,000 in Nepal, against Rs 2 million in India,” said Shrestha. The patients who undergo transplantation stay for up to 18 days in the hospital. Kidney donors’ age ranges from 22 to 58 years.

Addressing an interaction in the capital, Dr Shrestha highlighted the existence of gender-disparity among the donors. “There is no male donor yet,” he added. Surgeons on the occasion said despite dearth of resources, the initial experiments in renal transplantation have shown promising signs. They have also urged the people wanting to undergo kidney transplant to avail the facilities in Nepal rather than going abroad.

Doctors have suggested transplanting kidneys of people who succumb to brain haemorrhage within 24 hours but said laboratory facilities for ‘tissue typing’ and ‘cross-matching’ are a must for the

purpose. Currently, there is no separate operation theatre for kidney transplant and many patients are forced to pay a hefty sum of Rs 65,000 for ‘cross-matching’. “The government should establish separate operation theatre and the laboratory for ‘tissue typing’ and ‘cross-matching’ in the country,” said Shrestha.

According to Dr Rajani Hada, nephrologist, the initial target set for kidney transplant was 48 per year, but the scheme has fallen through for want of adequate facilities. She also urged the government to waive tax on medicines and provide subsidies to kidney patients.

“The limitations imposed by current legal provision also encouraging people to go to India for further treatment,” she said.Dinesh Thapa, a patient, who had undergone the kidney transplant in the capital’s Bir Hospital, said he got his second life.