Silence as tests prove man accusing Old Kampala hospital of kidney harvest born with one kidney

The police investigation unit recommended an abdominal scan has revealed that a 25-year-old Muhamood Kabanda who accused Old Kampala hospital of harvesting his kidney was born with only one kidney. #WhisperEyeNews #Uganda

The scan conducted by associate professor Kiguli Malwadde, a specialist radiologist at Kampala Imaging Centre, revealed that Kabanda was born with only the right kidney, a condition medically known as renal agenesis. Medics say that children with one kidney are perfectly healthy and live normal lives. However, they require monitoring to keep their single kidney healthy.

Earlier this week, Kabanda opened a case at Old Kampala police station alleging that his left kidney was removed when he went for treatment of injuries he sustained during an accident. He says that he was asked to pay Shs 3.35 million to cover the operation on his forehead which was severely injured during the accident.

He was taken for surgery on September 25, 2022, by a doctor he identified as Dr Alex Mugalu. To his dismay, Kabanda says that when he left the theatre, he had two wounds, one on his forehead and another on his abdomen. However, the surgeon said that he had taken tissue from his abdomen to cover the head injury.

Kabanda says he suspects that his organs were harvested, forcing him to conduct scans from Malcolm health care and Mengo hospital which revealed that he had one kidney. He subsequently reported the matter to the police.

As police launched investigations into the matter, Dr Richard Ambayo, a police surgeon recommended an abdominal-pelvis CT scan and a brain CT scan to be conducted either at Mulago hospital or Kampala Imaging Centre. In his referral notes, Dr Ambayo sought to understand whether Kabanda had one or two kidneys and if a medical procedure had been conducted to harvest any of them. Kabanda went for the scans on Friday.

On Saturday morning, Dr Moses Byaruhanga, the director of police health services presented the report of the abdominal pelvic CT scan from Kampala Imaging Centre to Kabanda and some of his family members that showed that Kabanda was born with one kidney which was bigger in size than the normal kidney and that he had multiple renal arteries yet usually, there is only one artery per kidney.

“A renal artery is supposed to be one but this one they are seeing multiple renal arteries in order to support this abnormal kidney on the right and to compensate for what is missing on the left. This is what the scan is reporting,” explained Dr Byaruhanga.

He added that it was absurd that the surgeon picked a tissue from the very side where there is no kidney and that this was just a coincidence. Byaruhanga explains that when a surgeon needs a tissue to use during the operation, it is taken from the patient’s body because these are compatible and hard for the body to reject.

“When you need to make a repair on a patient under surgery, you have to get that tissue from the patient because the body may reject a foreign tissue from another person and you react,” Byaruhanga said, adding that the tissue is taken from a section of the body which has some fat and that the cutting to get a tissue is made on the surface, not deep into the body.

Byaruhanga further explained that the incision made on Kabanda’s abdomen is unlikely to be one for kidney harvesting because it was small, about 10 centimetres. He says that usually when taking out a big organ like a kidney, a surgeon would make a bigger cutting. Kabanda however expressed further discontent and still doubts the results that indicated that he was born with one kidney.

Meanwhile, Dr Ssentongo Katumba, the registrar of the Uganda Medical Council says that they launched investigations into the matter and have since received a defence and the patient’s file from the hospital and the accused doctor. Katumba says they have invited Kabanda for an examination to help them conduct an independent investigation