Belgium-Vietnam kidney transplant program gives patients new hope
Kidney patients will have new hope as the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Public Health and Liege University Hospital in Belgium have teamed up with an aim to carry out more kidney transplants in Vietnam. The three-year cooperative program plans to conduct 50 kidney transplants each year in Vietnam.
Helping more patients
Currently, there are many Vietnamese patients in need of kidney and liver transplants, said Professor Michel Meurisse, head of the endocrine surgery division at Liege University Hospital. But, Vietnam still does not have the experience and technology to carry out sufficient numbers of kidney transplants. This cooperative program will bring new hope to Vietnamese patients, he said.
“I thought that Vietnam would have conducted at least 1,000 cases of kidney transplants yearly. But, in reality it has only performed 100 transplants in its medical history,” said Professor Meurisse. The professor said there were many cases where Vietnamese patients had to go to China to undergo kidney transplants. But, many of those surgeries had failed because the donor’s organ was not compatible with the recipient’s, said Mr. Meurisse.
As part of the cooperative program, the Belgium Ministry of Cooperation and Development will also invest 300,000 Euros to support a kidney transplant training course for HCMC’s public health service staff. The course will also be provided to health staff in medical clinics nationwide. Besides, leading physicians and doctors will be chosen to participate in an advanced course at Liege University Hospital for a three- to 12-week period.
Professor Meurisse said the cooperative program would be a chance for Vietnamese doctors to learn from the experiences and techniques of Belgian experts.The cooperative program also includes a project to build an information bank that provides profiles of patients who had suffered from kidney dysfunctions. This information bank will help patients understand kidney-related problems as well as kidney transplant procedures. The information bank was built by Belgian IT and medical experts and will debut for a trial period at the end of this year, said Mr. Meurisse.
Traditional vs. Laparoscopic Method
Last year, the Leige University Hospital cooperated with HCMC to carry out eight kidney transplant. Of the eight surgeries performed last year, four were carried out using the traditional surgical method while the rest were done using the laparoscopic method, said the professor. Professor Meurisse explained that the laparoscopic method involved performing tiny incisions with the help of a camera, thus was safer than the traditional method which involved a more invasive flank incision. The advantages of laparoscopic surgery are significantly lesser pain, shorter hospital stays and prompt recovery for patients, he said.
By Thu Huong - Thanh Nien - February 3, 2005
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