Minister of Health, Sylvia Masebo, says the government has embarked on an ambitious program of ensuring that kidney transplants are performed locally.
Ms Masebo says Levy Mwanawasa, University Teaching Hospital (UTH) and National Heart Hospital have been earmarked to start performing kidney transplants this year.
Speaking during the World Kidney Day (WKD)commemoration in Lusaka today, Ms Masebo said in order to build capacity among local experts the Ministry in collaboration with experts from India, UTH adult hospital performed 9 kidney transplants in the last one year and another 5 transplants are planned for next month.
She stated that following the need to increase access to kidney treatment, the government has also placed 105 machines across the country to offer dialysis with 70,000 dialysis treatments per year.
She added that currently there are 400 patients on long term dialysis and 1500 patients with acute kidney injury that require dialysis per year.
“The number of dialysis sessions, chronic patients and acute patients have doubled over the last two years”, she said.
Ms Masebo pointed out” government is preparing to provide screening services for kidney related diseases such as HIV, TB and COVID 19.
“My Ministry has engaged partners to implement the PEN PLUS at first level referral health facilities. The PEN PLUS strategy has been training first line health workers like nurses and clinical officers to improve screening, diagnosis and treatment of Non Communicable Diseases including kidney diseases at the first level referral hospitals”, she said.