Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Need for more nephrologists, says Semmalai

By Our Special Correspondent

SALEM Dec. 8. For every 10 lakh population, 100 persons suffer from renal ailments, and in Tamil Nadu alone, 7,000 persons develop renal complications every year, the Health Minister, S. Semmalai, said today.

At a function in Sri Gokulam Hospital here to inaugurate a renal transplant programme, Mr. Semmalai admitted that the number of nephrologists in the State was hardly 200.

In the three government hospitals in Chennai put together, on an average, 250 kidney transplantations were being done a month.

The Government was extending financial assistance to the tune of Rs. 1 lakh each to poor patients for renal transplantation.

The post-operative expenses too were quite high and the Government was sanctioning funds to all patients to defray the medical expenses for two years.

Though the relatives of patient could donate one of the two kidneys, many were not psychologically prepared to do so.

Another option available was to harvest the kidney from a cadaver donor or brain dead patient.

The Cadaver Transplant Act of 1994 passed by the previous Jayalalithaa Government facilitated this, Mr. Semmalai said.

The Finance Minister, C. Ponnaiyan, said that on kidney transplantation alone, the Government was spending Rs. 30 crores a year, and on the post-operative medicine, another Rs. 3 crores. The hospital managing director, K. Arthanari, said the relatives of a kidney donor need not nurture any notion that the donor would suffer later.

C.M. Thiagarajan, a consultant nephrologist, who had so far performed over 2,000 kidney transplantations, called for a uniform standard in surgical practices, as in the United States.

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