Africa-Press – Uganda. A new report by Makerere University College of Health Sciences indicates that people with tertiary level of education are more likely to be hesitant about organ donation, signaling future challenges in finding donors among the elites.
The study was done among 395 people in Nakawa market, Garden City and Wandegeya market, all in Kampala. This cross-sectional study was conducted between May and June 2021, before the enactment of the Uganda Human Organ Donation and Transplant Act and the first kidney transplant in Mulago Hospital last year.
“The need for stricter laws governing organ donation and transplantation, corruption, and fear were the main negative sentiments expressed by participants,” the report reads.
However, statistics in the report indicate that “Overall, there were 94.3 percent and 93.2 percent positive sentiments toward organ transplantation and organ donation, respectively”.
Dr Olivia Kituuka, the lead investigator said this study was important because donation depends on the “generosity and kindness of the person to be able to donate part of their body to allow the other person [recipient] to live”.
She said that amid the variations in perceptions and attitudes, more respondents were positive about organ donation and transplantation.
“People who had no formal education were more positive about organ donation than those who had tertiary level of education –much as they were also positive but were fewer, generally. Those with more education knew what organ is and what involved theft and negative things. But not all of them were negative,” Dr Kituuka, the liver transplant expert, said in an interview on Friday.
The expert also explained that some of the participants without formal education could have been positive because they don’t have enough knowledge about organ donation and transplantation.
“Someone who has no formal education may be hearing about organ donation for the first time. In Garden city, where we expect to find people who are more educated and financially stable, it had the least of those who are positive,” Dr Kituuka said.
“Those who had more education knew what organ donation is and what is involved including negative things like theft. But not all of them were negative but the number kept increasing with increasing education level, people who are more exposed and hear all sorts of things,” she added.
Dr Kituuka also said many people were aware of organ donation and transplantation. Most of the people get their information from social media, radio and TV, she said.
“We realized that we need to get this information [about organ donation and transplantation] into the public using those various platforms –radio, TV, social media for the community to be able to access the right information instead of waiting for patients to come into the hospitals. With the Act, We don’t want stories of people buying or selling their organs. We want those doing the right things protected,” she added.
Database of potential donors
Dr Moses Ocan, a co-investigator in the study said they also did blood tests on 40 Ugandans from five major tribes in Uganda, the tests he said are essential in organ donation. He appealed to government to support them to test as many Ugandans as possible and have this information in their database to ease tracing of potential donors.
“That information will be kept in a database online such that when someone needs organ transplant, we don’t go through the whole process of screening anybody who is presented as a potential donor. We just go to the database and put in the information for the recipient to see whether there are matching sequences [potential donors] in the database. In other countries we have these databases so that we can know who can give blood or an organ,” he said.
Dr Robert Wamala, the deputy director for research and innovations at the University, said many Ugandans in need still struggle to access organ transplantation services. “Recognising the urgency of this issue, this study therefore, offers us hope for identifying innovative strategies and best practices for expanding capacity and improving outcomes in organ donation and transplant services,” he said.
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