Africa-Press – Cape verde. Portuguese doctor António Norton de Matos regrets the delay in starting kidney transplants in Cape Verde. According to the vascular surgeon, the process now depends on the creation and publication of the Eligibility Verification Entity (EVA), provided for by law, responsible for assessing whether the donation in life meets the legal criteria, in particular the health of the donor, the need of the recipient and the safety of the collection.
Position expressed in exclusive statements to Rádio Morabeza, at the end of another mission to the Dialysis Center in São Vicente.
“The law was passed last year, and everything is fine, but it needs to be regulated. There is a basic and fundamental technical aspect, which is the creation of a medical and psychological entity, with three professionals, called EVA, which must, obviously, evaluate the candidate for organ donor, who must be completely voluntary and not pressured by any form of financial, political, family pressure, or whatever. Anyone who wants to offer a kidney to a sibling, a parent or a child must do so voluntarily,” he says.
Norton de Matos points to the overcrowding of the dialysis centers in Praia and Mindelo and the profile of kidney patients, most of whom are young, as variables that demonstrate the urgency of starting the procedure in the archipelago.
The specialist, who has been traveling to Cape Verde since 2015 on missions to support dialysis centers, warns that “the clock for kidney patients runs faster than bureaucratic time.”
“A transplant patient spends half the money that a patient on dialysis does. And, more seriously, a patient on dialysis dies 30% faster than a transplant patient. Not to mention the quality of life. A transplant patient travels, works, and has an almost normal life,” he emphasizes.
“We need those who manage the Ministry of Health to help us. They should move forward with the law, finish the construction of the block (…). That’s all that’s missing, these bureaucratic discrepancies. We need to publish the composition of the two EVA committees, on both islands, so that we can move forward. That’s the most dramatic aspect at the moment, besides the construction. I don’t understand, I’m not a manager, I don’t know what’s happening. How can they tell me for six months that a block’s pavement will be ready, ‘it’ll be done in 15 days’. I heard that in January, now it’s June”, he warns.
The surgeon reaffirms that, from a technical point of view, the conditions for carrying out kidney transplants in the archipelago are in place.
Kidney transplantation is considered an effective treatment for patients with chronic renal failure, offering a viable alternative to dialysis and significantly improving patients’ quality of life.
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