The Chief Executive Officer of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr. Opoku Ware Ampomah, has detailed a number of other major organ transplants that can be performed medically in Ghana should there be legislation to back these procedures.
He explained that for the most part, Ghana can handle a lot of organ transplantations but it has only been successful in doing it for kidneys.
Speaking to Daniel Oduro, the host of The Lowdown on GhanaWeb TV, the KBTH CEO said that the non-existence of legislation makes it difficult for the country to advance medical procedures for organ transplants.
“Our ophthalmology department actually also does cornea transplants, but the only caveat there is that because we do not have a tissue transplantation act, i.e. any enabling legislation to enable us to harvest some of these organs, the organs have come from abroad, at a huge cost. Basically, we fall on our colleagues abroad to facilitate some of these things for us.
“But there are other organs that can be transplanted: the liver, the heart, several other organs can be transplanted, and so once we have that enabling legislation, then we will be able to do some of these things,” he explained.
Dr. Opoku Ware Ampomah also explained how Ghana has been able to start kidney transplants in the absence of legislation.
He added that, largely, humans can survive on a quarter of a well-functioning kidney.
“For the kidney transplantation, we are able to start it because everybody has two kidneys, so you can donate one kidney. And if you are a normal, healthy person, the other kidney you have is enough to cater for your own needs. In a healthy person, you can survive on a quarter of one kidney.
“God built a lot of redundancies into our system, meaning that we have a lot of excess capacity, but if you take some other organs like the heart and the liver, for instance, you only have one,” he added.
Watch the full interview below:
Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.
