KUWAIT CITY, Jan 4: The Director of the Health Communication Center and the official spokesman for the Ministry of Health Dr. Abdullah Al-Sanad says last year witnessed several achievements in the Ministry of Health, including the launch of the handing over of new buildings for the Al-Adan Hospital expansion project, several successful and unprecedented surgeries including 140 kidney transplants in the Hamad Al-Essa Center, and launch of a comprehensive dental treatment service for children and adolescents under 15 years of age with special needs. In a press statement yesterday, Dr. Al-Sanad explained that the Adan expansion project consists of nine buildings, including the maternity and pediatric building, which contains 637 beds, 21 operating theatres, 16 facilities and technical departments, general and specialized surgery buildings, physiotherapy and rehabilitation buildings, parking building for physiotherapy patients with a capacity of 580 cars, and another building with parking capacity of 1,983 cars.

The expansion also includes a storage space of 12,000 square meters, a building for power generators, a building for medical gases, and a parking building with a capacity of 1,083 cars, as well as about 200 parking spaces for the cars of people with special needs. Dr. Al-Sanad indicated that the ministry started receiving the buildings on December 24, 2023, and the process of handing over the rest of the buildings will continue in the coming days and weeks. He highlighted that the kidney transplant program at the Hamad Al-Essa Center set a record last year by performing 140 transplant cases, among which were new operations performed for the first time in the country.

The most prominent among them were the transplant of pancreas after the transplant of a kidney, along with urinary tract restoration, the formation of a new bladder using the intestines, and the transplant of the ureter into it, five cases of kidney removal followed by placement of a new kidney, removal of a malignant tumor ramified from a previously transplanted kidney, and nine cases of kidney transplant in children who suffered from kidney failure, all of which were crowned with a success rate of more than 97 percent.

Dr. Al-Sanad stressed that last year also witnessed the launch of a comprehensive dental treatment service for children and adolescents under 15 years of age with special needs, as well as children who suffer from some other diseases and whose treatment requires specialized medical care at the Jaber Al-Ahmad Specialized Dental Center. He indicated that this service is the result of the cooperation between the Jaber Al-Ahmad Specialized Dental Center and Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital’s Dental Department, adding that this service is also available in the specialized dental centers of Adan, Amiri, Farwaniya and Jahra hospitals.

By Marwa Al-Bahrawi
Al-Seyassah/Arab Times Staff