KNH: Uhuru opens kidney and liver transplant centre

On Wednesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta opened a Sh204 million Zarina Merali Day Care Centre at Kenyatta National Hospital.

The project is co-financed by the Government of Kenya and the Zarina Merali Foundation, funded by the Government and the Sports Arts and Social Development Fund, at Sh155 million and Sh127 million respectively.
The center has four rooms, an endoscopy room, an electrophysiology room, and associated support facilities, and is equipped to provide a variety of outpatient procedures such as cosmetic, dental, gynecological, and endoscopic procedures.
Zarina Merali Day Care Center will provide KNH patients with outpatient or same-day surgery.

These are surgeries that do not require hospitalization before or after surgery, which means that patients who undergo some procedures can recover at home after surgery.
This is expected to significantly reduce hospital infections and reduce ward crowding, leading to better treatment of admitted patients.
Clinical outcomes are better when caring for patients at home close to family than when they are isolated in a hospital.

Ambulatory surgery is designed to reduce some surgical costs for patients, allow more patients to access specialist care, reduce the burden on hospitals, and reduce patient waiting time in the operating room.

The president also had lunch at the KNH Center for Kidney Disease and Organ Transplantation.

The center is a specialized facility for kidney and liver transplantation and the treatment of complex kidney disease, liver, and other organ transplantation, and provides training and research facilities.
It is backed by a state-of-the-art HLA laboratory for donor and acceptor matching.

The HLA laboratory, the first of its kind in East Africa, is a histocompatibility and genetic testing laboratory for solid organ and bone marrow transplantation.

The lab opened to patients on December 14, 2021.