Surgeon plans more live-donor liver transplants in Asia FEATURE 04/30/2010

Surgeon plans more live-donor liver transplants in Asia

FEATURE 04/30/2010 SINGAPORE — From ailing Middle East royalty arriving in private jets to desperate charity cases, Dr. Tan Kai Chah has seen them all in his liver disease center in Singapore. But the Malaysian doctor, one of Asia’s top liver surgeons, has a more lofty mission: make transplants and treatment more accessible to patients now that the organs can be sourced from living donors, not just cadavers. Liver disease is common in Asia due to poor hygiene practices and dietary habits and many patients end up dying because of sky-high medical costs, inadequate facilities and a small donor pool, experts say. In Southeast Asia, about six to eight percent of the population suffer from hepatitis B, said Tan, lead surgeon and executive chairman of the Asian Centre for Liver Diseases and Transplantation. “In some parts of Asia such as China’s Pearl River Delta (and) north Vietnam... it can affect up to about 12 percent of the population,” Tan, 57, said in an interview with AFP.... MORE   Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100430com6.html

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