A urologist and transplant surgeon has performed a record number of kidney transplants or a total of 1004 kidneys which is the highest in Bangladesh.
Dr Kamrul and his team have set the record with a 95 percent success rate. He performs operations without charging any honorarium and also serves follow-up without any consultation fees for the whole life of these kidney transplant recipients as well as offering free tests.
Professor Md Kamrul Islam, also discovered a low-cost preservative solution, which is used for preserving the kidneys before transplant. For this, he received a gold medal from the Bangladesh Association of Urological Surgeons, a national organization of urologists.
Kamrul Islam was born in Pakshi of Pabna District. In 1989 he passed MBBS from Dhaka Medical College. After completing his MBBS degree, he passed fellow college of physicians and surgeons or FCPS in Surgery and Fellow Royal College of Surgeons or FRCS from Edinburgh Royal College.
He joined the National Institute of Kidney Diseases & Urology as an Assistant Professor after completing his MS program in Urology and successfully started kidney transplants in 2007.
He resigned from the government service in 2011 and worked as a professor in a private hospital in the capital. There were some limitations to serving the poor people independently. In 2014, he established the Center for Kidney Disease & Urology Hospital in Shyamoli in the capital.
Centre for Kidney Diseases and Urology Hospital is a specialized hospital that deals with both Nephrology and Urology related disorders. Besides treatment of Urology and Nephrology related disorders there are facilities for doing dialysis and renal transplantation for renal failure patients at a reasonably cheaper price.
On the night of October 23, this reporter talked to Professor Kamrul Islam at the hospital. He said, “This hospital has been established for the treatment of lower, middle class and distressed people. Here the cost of medical services and various tests is comparatively much lower than other private hospitals.”
“The total expenditure for a kidney transplant in our hospital is only taka 2.1 lakh which is spent on a 12-member team, medicines cost, operational expenses, accommodation and others. But in the neighboring country the cost is in any average private hospital may exceed Taka 15 to 20 lakh,” he added.
He also said each that any oraganisation can provide free services to at least 10 to 20 percent of the patients with the same setup. For example, if 100 patients are treated here every day, it is possible to provide free services to 10 or 20 more people.
He said that it does not require separate manpower, building or additional set up. It takes a little bit of money for some re-agents for different tests. With a small amount of profit from 100 patients, the extra cost can be met effortlessly.
Kamrul does not end his responsibility by having a kidney transplant only once. He regularly followed his patients at a certain time for his whole life. When a patient comes for follow-up, he has to do some tests. For which the charge is taka 500-600. But Patients get all services free of cost.
Kamrul said that after the kidney transplant, some rules have to be followed as well as a follow-up from time to time from the close observation of the doctor. Once a kidney transplant is done, he will get this benefit for free of his whole life. Every Friday at least 50 people come for follow-up, who have had kidney transplants.
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Kamrul also said that kidney problems are usually caused by taking adulterated food and taking unnecessary medicine. For this, adulterated food with formalin and preservatives should be avoided. Medicine should not be taken without the advice of an experienced doctor. In particular, it is better to stay away from taking antibiotics and pain medications. Medicine should not be taken if there is a slight problem in the body.
“Apart from this, if anyone in the family has kidney disease, they should be careful. Especially those who have problems with diabetes and high blood pressure need to be more careful. Also, need kidney test once a year,” he added.
Kidney is one of the most important organs in the human body. On average, about 6,000 new patients are suffering from kidney disease every year in the country.
Each year more than 100 renal failure patients are dying in the country due to the inability of meeting the expenditure of treatment. However, most of the time, the symptoms of kidney diseases are not understood in advance. When a patient realizes, his kidney damage increases a lot. In many cases, the kidneys can no longer return to normal. So, everyone has to be careful in advance.
In 1982, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) started the first kidney transplant in the country. Out of these, kidney transplants were done in two government hospitals and a few private hospitals.
However, all hospitals do not have kidney transplant facilities. Outside Dhaka, only two kidneys were transplanted at Chittagong Medical College Hospital. About three thousand kidneys have been transplanted in the country so far.
