Recent travels...Nigeria

Nigeria's Daily Independent covers the talk I gave there on Monday:
Exchange Programme’ll Improve Kidney Transplant In Africa – Expert

By Oyeniran Apata, Lagos

A Nobel Prize winner for Economic Science, Professor Alvin Roth, has declared that the poor state of Nigerian patients with chronic renal disease can be improved through effective kidney exchange programme.

Roth identified high cost of management, poor infrastructure, low awareness and non-direct donors as some of the factors contributing to the prevalence of the pitiable conditions in the country and the continent of Africa as a whole.

Delivering a paper as the keynote speaker at the second Covenant University International Conference on African Development Issues tagged, “Biotechnology, ICT, Materials and Renewable Energy: Potential Catalyst for African Development,” Roth lamented that Nigeria with a poor renal registry was able to successfully carry out only 143 Kidney Transplants (KTs) in 10 years against 11,000 carried out successfully in the United States of America.

Professor Ruth in his paper entitled, “Kidney Disease in Nigeria and the U.S. and Possibilities of Co-operation and Mutual Aid,” lamented that despite the huge number of successes recorded in the U.S., America is still falling behind in the treatment of kidney failure.

“I want to talk to you today about how we have taken some initial steps to increase kidney transplant in the U.S. through kidney exchange, and how such a programme might be extended to Africa and be a catalyst to build medical infrastructure in Africa,” he said.

He added that the kidney transfer waiting list in the USA was getting longer year in year out as more people are dying while waiting to be treated.

"In his words he said, “In 2003, 83,000 Americans were in immediate need of a kidney transplant; in 2014, 100,000 Americans were in immediate need of a kidney transplant. More patients on the wait list are dying every year. In 2003, 4,000 Americans died waiting for a kidney transplant, in 2013, 4,500 Americans died waiting for a kidney.”



He lamented that as similar epidemiological data is hard to come by in Africa, the prevalence of chronic renal failure and End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) have remained high worldwide and the epidemiology has changed significantly in the last decade in industrialised countries, contending that patients’ outcome is still appalling in developing countries.

He added: “There is paucity of information on the magnitude of the burden of renal disease in our environment. Obtaining accurate data is hampered by the poor socio-economic status of most patients with lack of access to specialised care in tertiary institutions, where most of the data are generated.”

Chancellor of the university and General Overseer of the Living Faith Bible Church Worldwide, Dr. David Oyedepo, stated that the conference was aimed at enabling the country to benefit from the wealth of experience of the experts and particularly Roth’s application of economic theory in finding solutions for “real world” problems."

***********
Update: here's some more coverage: Faith-Based Organizations, Private Sector, Crucial to Successes in Kidney Transplantation – Professor Alvin Roth