In the University Clinical Center of the Republika Srpska, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the last kidney transplant was performed in March 2020. That is why patients are again forced to go outside the country. Incidentally, transplants have been performed at this clinical center since 2010, and so far 33 have been performed.
The pandemic stopped the organ transplant process in the RS, and the last one was done three years ago.
While waiting for things to start from the deadlock, patients who need a transplant go abroad, and the largest number of them go to Belarus.
“I think six patients have been transplanted since the beginning of this year in Minsk. This is not a small number, considering that dialysis is mostly done by an elderly population. You have people who have donors and they go to Istanbul, to Turkey”, says Aleksandar Radun, president of the Association of Dialysis and Transplant Kidney Patients of the RS.
Radun points out that the big problem is that cadaveric transplants are not carried out in the RS, i.e. transplanting organs from a deceased person to a living person. At the University Clinical Center, they confirmed that they only do living donor transplants:
“Transplants are not performed in life-threatening patients, but in those who are in a stable state of health and meet certain criteria for transplantation. A small number of transplants are performed due to the complexity of preparing the patient for transplantation, and the necessary multidisciplinary approach to treatment, as well as the coordination of numerous branches of medicine that are involved in the transplant process itself.”
The good thing is that the Republika Srpska Health Insurance Fund fully covers the costs of the transplant.
“It made it easier for people to save themselves from dialysis. Dialysis is a bad thing. It’s generally death. It lasts infinitely long, for years,” Radun points out.
In the UKC, they say that in ten years they have successfully performed 33 kidney transplants. The Association representing patients suffering from kidney diseases says that the introduction of cadaveric transplantation would save the lives of many.
