![]() government administrative and logistical channels. In 2004, Falta attempted to save 16-year-old Honduran girl in renal failure, waiting six months to navigate the U.S. "When he came and described the situation it was the exact same thing I tried to do on my own," Falta said. Jindal was open to the idea, pondering whether they could teach transplant techniques to the Guyanese surgeons and step back after a few years, leaving them to perform the procedure on their own. "Here in the United States, dialysis is shown to decrease your lifespan five to eight years." "A kidney transplant is still cheaper than dialysis," Falta said. "It would be a big boost.there were 250 patients, and they can't afford to send all the patients to India," Jindal said. Ramsammy suggested that the surgery be done, in country. Leslie Ramsammy, Guyana minister of health and president of the World Health Assembly had another idea. "They do surgery at the cost of one tenth that in the United States. Jindal explained original efforts were geared to find money to send the teenager to India for a transplant. Y., the wheels were set in motion for the ground-breaking surgery. When a flyer soliciting funds landed in the hands of a Guyanese philanthropist living in Queens, N. The struggling mother tried every way she could to raise money for dialysis. A huge economic drain on the community, on the government and the people themselves," Falta said. And, we usually require three times a week and these people have to pay out of their pockets, so for a developing country it's a big problem. "Dialysis is a very expensive life-saving procedure and in Guyana it costs $500 cash per session. "Sometimes the bus ride into town to sell the vegetables cost more than what she was able to make" Jindal said.Īccording to 2006 United Nations statistical data, the per capita annual income in Guyana was $1,219 compared $43,562 in the United States. He received dialysis whenever his single mother, who worked as a roadside vegetable vendor, was able to scrape the money together. Soon after, he quit school, suffering chest pain, general malaise and chronic fatigue. It all began when the teenager was diagnosed with kidney failure two years ago. From their WRAMC location, the Walter Reed team supervised operating room preparations and staffing. It took four months to set up the infrastructure necessary to perform the procedure at Georgetown Public Hospital. The team used WRAMC surgical instruments and returned them to the hospital after the operations. Walter Reed has the only HLA (human leukocyte antigen) lab in the military and one of the oldest in the country, according to Falta. The Walter Reed team members perform about 30 transplants a year at WRAMC.įalta explained all the critical pre-operative lab tests were conducted at Walter Reed, such as tissue-typing, cross-match. Laura Owen, a WRAMC transplant technologist, and Art Womble, a certified nurse anesthetist from Athens-Limestone Hospital in Athens, Ala., who donated their skills and vacation time to perform the milestone surgery. Melanie Guerrero, a Walter Reed Army Medical Center critical care physician, Spc. The group trained their Guyanese medical counterparts.įalta and Jindal, along with Lt. Jindal led the team of five Army medical professionals who traveled to the small, South American country, the size of Idaho, for the humanitarian effort. ![]() The teenager's kidney function was so poor that Jindal said the situation was like "throwing the dice every week" on how long he would survive. The landmark, living donor surgery involved two simultaneous operations: harvesting a healthy, compatible kidney from a 41-year-old mother for transplant to her 18-year-old son in end-stage renal failure. Rahul Jindal, assistant chief, performed the first kidney transplant operation in the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, July 12. Edward Falta, chief of the Walter Reed organ transplant service and Dr.
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