Good information on donors, recipients needed to promote organ donations - Dr. Nsiah-Asare

The Presidential Advisor on Health, Dr. Nsiah-Asare has revealed that the government is training and grooming more personnel in kidney transplant in Ghana.

Dr. Nsiah-Asare noted that the lack of adequate personnel for kidney transplants has hampered the progress of legislation in the country.

Speaking in an interview with the host of The Lowdown on GhanaWeb TV, Daniel Oduro, on August 7, 2023, The Presidential Advisor on Health said that the government is seriously training more health professionals in kidney transplants.

“If you don't have enough trained personnel to do it and it's maybe one person or two people, then it will be on the lower banner. But once we are training people, that's why it's coming up now more, because we are training a lot of people with specialties where they can do the kidney transplant. So last week, we did one.

“Now people are learning it and they have to work with it and we have the chance to do it instead of going to India or the UK,’” he told Ghanaweb Tv.

Dr. Nsiah-Asare also outlined measures that should be put in place to ensure that the lives of patients are not jeopardized.

“If you want to do all these things, you have to get very good information on the donor and the recipients. They're very important.

"You have to also make sure that the donor screening is well done. You have to screen the donor very well so that the donor doesn't have any blood diseases like HIV or hepatitis or anything, so it doesn't infect the other person.

“Then you also have to do quality control to make sure that whatever you are doing, even the banks that you are creating, there's a lot of quality control. So all these things come into whatever you are doing. You don't rush and go and do a law when you have not even implemented the legislation because you don't have the means but now health has changed.

People are having to go to India, South Africa, and all so that's why people are thinking that why not now? We have to pass the law so that we have the organs for transplantation,” he noted.

Watch the latest episode of The Lowdown on GhanaWeb TV 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.

BS/WA