A team of Chinese liver transplant surgeons will visit Islamabad soon to attend a conference on liver disease and discuss with their Pakistani counterparts the latest developments in the relevant medical field.
The team will include a renowned Chinese surgeon Vice President of Tianjin First Central hospital, Professor Zhong Yang Shen, and two hospital's senior doctors Dr Zhi Jun Zhu and Dr Chen Pan. The Tianjin hospital has recently set a record, conducting transplant surgery with a success ratio of about 95 percent.
According to the hospital sources, hundreds of liver patients from various countries, including Pakistan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Spain, Korea and Egypt were operated upon in the recent years.
There were 54 Pakistani patients, who successfully went through liver transplant during 2005. Dr Zhi Jun said the most of the patients come for the transplant at the end stage of their liver disease, with hepatitis 'B' and 'C', so their treatment took time. In normal cases, the patients are recovered within a period of two to three months.
He advised that a patient should decide for transplant only on recommendation of a senior medical physician in his own country and he should be able to travel and afford necessary expenditure.
Generally, a patient needs to stay in the hospital around three to four months. In normal cases, liver transplant costs around $60,000 including admission charges and medicines.
Asif Majeed, son of Lieutenant General Abdul Majeed Malik (Retd) was the first Pakistani, who received liver transplant in the hospital. He said in an interview that the patients of blood group 'A' and 'B' were provided admission in the hospital for transplant within a month. However, the patient of group 'O' took a little longer time, due to non-availability of the same group's liver.
Meanwhile, Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu in a statement said China was drafting a law on organ transplant to regulate the growing operation. Although significant technological progress has been made in organ transplant, problems still remain.
China will set up a special committee to draft regulations for organ transplant and work out technical standards for institutions that perform the operations.