Strife among staff members: Transplant procedures halted at IKD on BoG directives

PESHAWAR: The Institute of Kidney Diseases (IKD) Peshawar - the only public sector facility in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa - has stopped transplant procedures on the directives of the Board of Governors (BoG), apparently due to internal strife among staff members and their incompetence in mastering transplant surgery.

“There are multiple issues in IKD, which led to its closure. The institute had hired a private consultant to train staff, but he failed to train anyone over the past few years and instead focused on his personal business,” said Ghulam Qadir Khan, chairman of the BoG, while speaking to The News.

He explained that the sole purpose of hiring the consultant was to train faculty members at IKD.“If our staff members aren’t trained, then there is no point in continuing his services. He would come from Rawalpindi for a transplant surgery and then leave,” added Ghulam Qadir Khan, a former bureaucrat.

When asked about the inability of faculty members, particularly a professor who had assumed the role of transplant surgeon after the retirement of Prof Dr Attaur Rahman, to continue transplant surgeries and train others, Ghulam Qadir confirmed that the professor had neither learned surgery nor trained faculty members.

“There were many problems in IKD, which obstructed the development of transplant surgery. We know some people who are doing transplant surgery outside the hospital and are planning to bring them in,” he added.

He agreed with reports that some of the senior faculty members were not qualified and that’s why they did not allow young and competent people to join IKD.

“The young and competent people didn’t join IKD because of the working environment and some of the incompetent faculty members. They are likely to retire soon and I believe it will open the doors for qualified professionals to join IKD,” said the BoG chairman. Asked if it was the only public sector facility and a hope for thousands of patients suffering from renal failures, and its closure will deprive them of the transplant opportunity, Ghulam Qadir claimed they would start transplant surgery in IKD in a month through their own staff.

“Give me a call after a month, and we’ll have started transplant surgery in IKD,” he vowed. IKD was established in 2008 by the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal government, headed by then chief minister Akram Khan Durrani.

It was the first state-of-the-art facility but the successive governments did not give proper attention to develop more specialties.Its present director, Prof Dr Mazhar Khan, has expanded services by three hundred times. He established a new out-patient department (OPD), and effectively separated services for outdoor and indoor patients.

However, IKD didn’t flourish accordingly due to internal politics of faculty members.Dr Mazhar Khan introduced new specialties at IKD, including a separate department for pediatric urology with its own ward, OPD, and operation theatre - a unique feature available only at IKD and Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) in Peshawar.