Bangladesh is set to begin kidney transplant from the brain-dead to partially mitigate huge demand of kidney transplant aspirant patients, reports BSS.
The move came as the government last year amended the organ donation law allowing collection of organs from the brain-dead with the consent from the relatives which is still a major challenge.
A surgical team from Korea is scheduled to arrive in Dhaka today (Sunday) to conduct the first ever kidney transplant from the brain-dead jointly with a group of local physicians that will give some kind of relief to estimated 5000 patients who are waiting to transplant their kidneys.
"The South Korean team will be here on February 10 …… They will conduct the first cadaveric organ donor transplantation in the country if brain-dead donor could be found and the family members permit," Dr ASM Tanim Anwar, who is coordinating the Bangladesh-Korea Kidney Transplantation team, told the news agency.
Terming the initiative as a major landmark of the country's Kidney treatment, he said, "The annual demand for the kidney transplantation in Bangladesh right now is estimated to be 5000, but on average annually, only around 120 people can manage kidneys from their relatives to undergo a transplant".
"Kidney transplantation from living donor is not a new thing for us since we are doing it from 1982. Now, we got prepared to do it from brain-dead person that had already been started even in India and Sri Lanka apart from other developed countries," he said.
Dr Anwar, Nephrologist of Dhaka Medical College Hospital who had a fellowship on organ donor management and transplant from Korea University Anam Hospital, said the Korean specialised team from the hospital will impart a hands-on training on cadaveric transplantation to a group of Bangladeshi doctors during their visit here.
Emphasising on creating awareness, he said, "People of our country hesitate to donate organs because of their emotion, values and religious prejudice, which appear as bigger challenges for the organ donation in Bangladesh."
In this regard, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), however, endorsed the campaign as the basic principles of Islam always upheld humanitarian causes.
Islamic scholar Maulana Abdullah Al-Maruf in this regard, referred to the decision of the OIC's Islamic Council which ruled that one can donate his or her organs before or after death "for the welfare of human being".
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