The Kenyatta University Teaching Research and Referral Hospital will in six months start offering kidney transplant services.
This will be done in collaboration with specialists from India and the UK.
Establishment of a kidney transplant centre at the facility will be a major relief to thousands of patients who incur huge treatment costs abroad.
Hospital board chairperson Prof Olive Mugenda said the facility has started training local doctors in India and other countries to facilitate transplant knowledge transfer once the centre is established.
With dialysis only being a stopgap measure in the kidney disease treatment, Mugenda said there is urgency for the hospital to begin offering transplant services.
She spoke during a free medical camp at the facility. More than 1,000 people were screened for kidney disease.
Mugenda said the hospital recently acquired 20 dialysis machines bringing to 35 the number of machines handling the increasing demand for kidney screening.
“Our plan is to expand this even up to 50 as they are direly needed,” she said.
“Dialysis is not what is required in the end. It cannot be done for life…Transplant is the end requirement and we are working with specialist doctors with a plan to have the centre established and operational in six months.”
Hospital CEO Ahmed Dagane urged Kenyans to undertake preventive measures to keep kidney diseases away.
Dr Njogu Maina, a nephrologist and the head of the kidney department at the facility, said the hospital has been receiving severe cases of people suffering chronic diseases.
Most of the patients, he said, report to hospitals while at advanced stages of kidney ailments, which makes treatment difficult.
He blamed increased kidney ailments to poor eating habits, poor lifestyle, lack of physical exercises, lack of information and delayed screening.
