Cuba Carried Nearly 5,000 Kidney Transplants

[Clark]

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Cuba Carried Nearly 5,000 Kidney Transplants

Cuba has carried out nearly 5,000 kidney transplants since the beginning of this program in the 1970s up to the present, with a 70 percent survival at 12 months.

  This is a great achievement for Cuba, noted Doctor Alexander Marmol Soñora, official of the Ministry of Health National Transplant Organization (ONT), who underlined that the surgery has a major bio-psycho-social and rehabilitation impact.

Patients do not depend on an artificial kidney to survive, Marmol stated.

The majority of the kidneys used for the transplants carried out (4,489) come from deceased donors and 383 from living donors, Marmol told Granma newspaper.

In the case of kidney transplant of children, Cuba has 20 years of experience holding remarkable results in the living donor program.

The ONT has devised strategies aiming at increase donations as the only way to guarantee the systematicity of the program and the quick response to the thousands of needed patients given that four people could be saved for every donor, the doctor pointed out.

To correctly carry out a kidney transplant, it is necessary to HLA typing and conducting serology tests, however, the sole laboratory that carries out these tests are the U.S.-based "One Lamda", which stated it would not sell more reagents to Cuba.

As a result of this measure, backed by the U.S. blockade imposed on Cuba for over 50 years, Cuban specialists have not been able to HLA type patients, who have had to receive the transplants without this technique.

However, alternatives are sought and the Cuba State, as a result of an economic effort, will acquire a laboratory to carry out the mentioned tests on donors and patients.