Lubaga Hospital has launched the first Organ Transplant Centre in Uganda.
“Organ transplants transform lives and reshape the future,” the hospital said in a short statement.
In September last year, management promised to amplify the hospital with a state-of-the-art organ transplant specialised centre.
“The state-of-the-art Specialist Centre at Lubaga Hospital will offer modern transplant services, over 25 specialized and super-specialized medical services, affluent in-patient-wing and private outpatient services,” the Hospital tweeted.
The Archbishop of Kampala Diocese, Paul Ssemwogerere, and Uganda Martyrs University Vice Chancellor, Prof. Patrick Kyamanywa, on Monday, attended the commissioning of the hospital’s transplant theatre.
The theatre was named after the late Dr Rita Moser, the first medical superintendent of Lubaga Hospital.
Prof. Kyamanywa who assumed the role of chairman of Lubaga Hospital’s board of directors, also witnessed the launch of Dr. Rita Moser transplant centre at the hospital.
Lubaga becomes the first private Hospital in the country to have a facility that performs organ transplants and it is hoped that this will save many Ugandans the financial burden of seeking such procedures abroad, reported UBC TV.
The Ministry of Health recently said that several hospitals have started expressing interest to be designated as organ transplant centres following the enactment of the Uganda Human Organ Donation and Transplant Act, 2022.
“We are going to have the public and private hospitals doing it [organ transplantation]. Mulago Hospital is almost ready. But there are some private hospitals, which have also shown interest. For kidney transplant, Rubaga Hospital has applied, but we have not assessed [their capacity],” Dr Moses Muwanga, the assistant commissioner for clinical services at the Ministry of Health, told Daily Monitor.
According to the Act, which was signed into law by President Museveni on March 15, the capacity of each centre should be assessed by the Uganda Organ Donation and Transplant Council.
It is the council that recommends the centre to be designated by the Health Minister to do organ transplants.
According to the new law, for a facility to be designated as a transplant centre, it must have an Intensive Care Unit dedicated to transplant, specialised medical professionals such as transplant surgeons, anaesthesiologists and transplant nurses, and theatres for a donor and a recipient among others.
According to Lubaga Hospital Executive Director, Dr Julius Luyimbaazi, with over 123 years of experience and a 240-bed capacity referral unit offering a full range of specialised services and with the Vision of being “a state-of-the-art health care facility in Africa”, they are well-placed to handle the task ahead.
The story of Lubaga Hospital started on 18th October 1899 when six missionary sisters of Our Lady of Africa arrived at Lubaga Hill where they were given a plot of land by Kabaka Daudi Chwa.
Beginning as an open-air dispensary in the first few months, the facility grew to a twenty-bed Hospital by 1900, and with the grace of God, this journey of growth has since taken leaps and bounds to date.
“Being the second-oldest Hospital in the country, we take pride in having taken care of the health care needs of Ugandans for the last 122 years, through times of war, epidemics, natural disasters and now the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Luyimbaazi.