PONDICHERRY: The Indira Gandhi Government General hospital and Post Graduate Institute has opened a full fledged renal transplantation facility for patients free of cost. Director of Health and Family Welfare Services Dr Dilip Kumar Baliga told reporters here on Tuesday that the facility was inaugurated after getting necessary permission from the Central Government.

A high powered inspection team comprising specialists from the Directorate of General Health Services, New Delhi had visited the hospital and approved setting up of the unit after ascertaining "excellent investigation facilities, diagnostic equipment and technical know-how" available in the hospital to do transplantation.

Dr. Baliga said that this facility was a dream come true story, as the hospital authorities had been relentlessly making efforts for years to establish the unit so that eligible patients having a donor (first degree relationship) could use the facility without having to go to Chennai for the transplantation.

The Director said that all along patients, with end stage renal failure, were offered facilities such as peritoneal and hemodialysis. Every year around 1,600 dialyses were being done in the hospital.

The first kidney transplantation was done in the hospital on March 28 on a 38-year-old male patient suffering from an end stage kidney disease. He had been undergoing dialysis in the hospital regularly. His elder sister intended to donate one of her kidneys to him.

Legalities followed

The Director said that necessary issue matching and other tests were performed after fulfilling all the legal requirements as per Human Organ Transplantation Act. Facilities both inside the operation theatre and in the postoperative ward for recipient had been upgraded for regular surgeries. Dr Baliga said that a batch of staff including theatre nurses, head nurses and also doctors associated with transplantation work had been given intensive refresher training in Chennai under the guidance of senior transplant surgeon Dr D Chandrasekaran.

He said that renal transplantation facility was now available only in a restricted manner for patients having first-degree relationship donors. As Pondicherry had full-fledged evidence base (birth certificates) there was no difficulty to establish the relationship through Ethics Committee. The team of nephrologists, Dr N. Murugesan, Dr.K. Narayanan and Dr. A. Subramanian, and urologists, Dr. Vasudevan and Dr. Vijay Oza and the Medical Superintendent Dr V. Govindarajan were present at press meet.

The Director also thanked Dr. Ratna Janarthanan a retired senior specialist in the Department of Urology for his strenuous efforts to have the block established.

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