THE Human Organ And Tissue Transplant Agency (HOATTA) since its establishment has been working to ensure that transplant services here are accessible and equitable, and as such, several regulations and procedures have been drafted.

This is according to the agency’s chairperson Dr Shanti Singh-Anthony, who made this known during a recent certification ceremony, where the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation was designated as the first kidney transplant centre in the country.

She said the agency commenced its work in April of 2023 and since then, the focus has been on building systems, protocols and procedures for establishing a deceased donation programme.

This programme will see designated centres in Guyana being able to do cadaveric transplantations.

“On the level of regulations, we have drafted seven regulations to operationalise the act and this will be at the policy level. In relation to human resource, we have built capacity and continue to build capacity,” Dr Singh-Anthony said.

Against this backdrop, she noted that key staff have been involved in training on standard operating procedures and protocols for deceased donation among other things.

Added to this, concerning clinical patient systems, protocols and procedures have been developed along the deceased donation continuum from donor identification to donor retrieval and as such, key staff at the GPHC were trained to use these protocols.

A medical education programme for different categories of healthcare workers through medical education sessions, has also commenced to ensure that staff are trained.
As part of the work being undertaken by the agency, the chair indicated that they have had several consultations with key stakeholders such as dialysis centres, so that staff of these centres can begin to think about transplantation and engage their patients on this.

“What has to be done to get us to a point of deceased donation and transplantation? The short answer is a lot, but we are working to ensure that all systems are built in a way that there is self-sufficiency with our transplant programme and that transplant services are accessible, equitable, ethical and based on systems that are just,” the chair of the agency lamented.

The passage of the Human Organ And Tissue Transplant Act provided the legislative framework to ensure that services become more available and accessible to persons in need. It also catered for the establishment of the agency which is responsible for overseeing the removal, donation and transfer of human organs to patients in need.