ABU DHABI // B M paid Dh400,000 for a kidney in Egypt, but like many Emirati patients, she does not regret the decision and would do it again.
Health Authority – Abu Dhabi was willing to send B M, 36, to Germany for a transplant last year, but when she was told she needed a blood-relative donor, she opted for Egypt.
She said: “I got my sister as a donor but then I didn’t have the heart to go through with it. What if something happens to her, I thought? She is still unmarried. I don’t want to carry the guilt for the rest of my life. Now I can have discussions and discipline her if she did something wrong, but if I take her kidney then there will be sensitivities between us, and I won’t be able to speak to her because I took a part of her body.
“You haven’t tried asking a family member to give you a part of their body. They all get scared. I’m an aunt to over 200 nieces and nephews; not one of them offered to donate.”
B M discovered a doctor in Egypt who would perform the operation and she would never have to meet the donor.
“I took a flight from Germany to Egypt and met the doctor and agreed to do the operation all on the same day.”
Despite warnings, B M said she felt “comfortable” with the doctor, and had faith in God.
“The doctor told me that the operation was illegal and he would not be able to give me a single document to prove that I had done it. He told me that I would not see my family or anyone for five days. He would pick me up from my house and take me to the operating room.”
B M had the operation last November in a villa in Egypt. She said the doctor called her family to tell them the operation was successful. But she saw no medical equipment in the room. She recalled having injections and seeing scissors.
“I was scared,” she admitted. “I depended on God and thought that this might be mercy from God to relieve me of the suffering of dialysis.”
On the sixth day after the operation, B M returned to Abu Dhabi. She tried to remain in Egypt, but was refused treatment.
“As an Emirati, my government should have sent me to a hospital to get treatment, but the embassy refused. When they refused, I was forced to come back and the stitches all opened when I arrived. The doctor in Egypt told me that all his patients are admitted into the hospital for post care by their government. Why did the UAE do this to me?” she said.
B M was admitted into Sheikh Khalifa Medical City upon arrival in Abu Dhabi, and stayed for four months for treatment against infections and other ailments.
She blames the UAE embassy and its health attache in Egypt.
“This wouldn’t have happened if they had agreed to keep me in a hospital in Egypt. The operation is illegal, I know, but that is none of their business. If you are an Emirati who is sick abroad then they should have admitted me as a new patient for 20 days at least.”
She insists the transplant was a success and that the doctor was “a gift from God”. “He gave me a new life,” she said.
salnuwais@thenational.ae
