Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan says Cab­i­net has ap­proved to im­ple­ment a trans­plant pro­gramme to as­sist the Na­tion­al Or­gan Trans­plant Unit.He said this week­end a team of doc­tors would vis­it the Do­na­tion and Trans­plan­ta­tion In­sti­tute in Barcelona, Spain, to un­der­stand the har­vest­ing and trans­plan­ta­tion of or­gans and the fa­cil­i­ties and sys­tems con­cern­ing the trans­plan­ta­tion of kid­neys.

He said so far 74 trans­plants have been done in T&T.Khan was speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, yes­ter­day."It is go­ing to be done to im­prove and de­vel­op a process to man­age or­gan do­na­tion, or­gan re­trieval and or­gan trans­plan­ta­tion in an ef­fi­cient and ad­e­quate way that should re­sult in an in­crease in do­na­tions," Khan said.He said the in­sti­tute had part­nered with oil com­pa­ny, Rep­sol, to bring the ini­tia­tive to T&T.

Khan added: "We do have at this time a high in­ci­dence of kid­ney dis­ease as well as a num­ber of pa­tients. In fact, a large num­ber of pa­tients are on re­nal dial­y­sis."As we have been say­ing for the last cou­ple of months this is a re­sult of the com­pli­ca­tions of the non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, such as hy­per­ten­sion and di­a­betes which re­sult in re­nal fail­ures," Khan said. He said the unit would work with the in­sti­tute to al­low health pro­fes­sion­als to in­ter­act with spe­cial­ists from Trinidad and Spain.

He said there would be a trans­fer arrange­ment for lo­cal doc­tors to vis­it the in­sti­tute to de­vel­op their skills in the eth­i­cal, sur­gi­cal, med­ical and so­cial as­pects of trans­plan­ta­tion. Khan added: "In fact, this is go­ing to as­sist the Na­tion­al Or­gan Trans­plant Unit which has done about 74 trans­plants so far to date but it is not enough."He said the Span­ish Gov­ern­ment would cov­er the ma­jor­i­ty of the cost for train­ing.

Asked what was the de­mand for the ini­tia­tive, Khan said:"If we look at it in a holis­tic man­ner, the amount of pa­tients who are young, as well as who have kid­neys dis­eases and who are on dial­y­sis, the de­mand is con­sid­ered to be ex­treme­ly great."