The Sunday News
Feature Robin Muchetu
AFRICANS are a very cultural and conservative people who are not easily swayed into adopting new cultures outside their traditional beliefs. A fairly recent practice of organ donation has been a subject that has not been fully explored but is occurring among Africans. Last September a prominent Bulawayo medical doctor — Dr Naboth Chaibva suffering from renal failure received a kidney from his daughter Heather. This was done so that his life could be saved as renal failure is a life threatening disease and if one does not get a transplant they can have a very short life span. This meant that his daughter remained with one kidney.
And from that arises the question on whether the sharing of body parts is African or not.
Professor Sheunesu Mupepereki said the area was still very unclear. “We have no precedence to go by because we never used to give our body parts to anyone as Africans. So we cannot certainly have a standpoint at the moment as this is new to us,” he said.
However, he said the idea behind donating an organ was a noble one in that people want to save lives.
“If a child gives a parent an organ we are happy about that because she has seen the value of life and decide to save one so it is acceptable that she donates,” he said.
Prof Mupepereki said times were changing and there was a need to embrace this change for the betterment of people’s lives. He said it was a new era and new technologies and systems were in place so advances that change people’s lives for the better were welcome.
“Personally I feel there are no consequences at all if people donate organs. We cannot reject advances that are there to save lives. Our ancestors will certainly not roll in their graves if people donate body organs to their loved ones in an effort to prolong life,” he said.
He said it was essential to adjust to new developments gradually as the world was certainly changing.
Dr Chaibva himself said there were many concerns and fears when his daughter decided to donate a kidney to him but he was a strong believer who was not easily moved by what other people believe and think.
“Call it taboo or anything, I believe that there is nothing wrong with such things, as long as what you are doing saves lives then it is ok. It is just like marrying a man whose totem and yours are the same, as long as there is no close relationship it is ok. Others say its taboo but basically if you are not related there is nothing wrong with that marriage,” said Heather.
Renowned culturalist Mr Pathisa Nyathi also concurred with Prof Mupepereki saying that people were living in a changing world.
“We have to appreciate that African ideology, belief and cosmology are not cast in stone, they are subject to change and this has been caused by the fact that we have been in contact with other people. We do not live in isolation so we tend to borrow from other people a lot more, especially when it comes to science,” he said.
Mr Nyathi admitted that in terms of advancement, Africans were not at par with their European, Asian and American counterparts and this necessitated borrowing of ideas from modern science including medical technology.
“We learn these things from others because we are not equal in terms of technological advancements. People understand and accept things at different levels so organ donation is making its way in to our culture and it is changing lives indeed. That is the essence of change,” he added.
Africans again believe that a person born whole has to die and be buried with all his limbs intact.
Mr Nyathi says burial of a dead person in the past, before much interference of tradition and culture by the Western world would not have been permissible if a person had missing limbs or organs. He said the change that has been embraced was making such things acceptable slowly.
Prophet Itayi Ukama from Abundant Life Revival Mission International Zimbabwe said the church was in support of organ donation.
“God’s word does not condemn this; just as Jesus Christ gave his whole body for the sake of love and that people be saved, we too are able to do the same by giving a body part in order to save a person’s life,” he said.
He said people are entitled to do just what Jesus did and that it was not wrong to donate an organ to relatives that need them just as people donate blood.
Prophet Ukama, however, castigated those that take peoples organs to enhance businesses saying it was unGodly and highly unacceptable.
Donation is viewed as an act of neighbourly love and charity by many churches. They encourage all members to support donation as a way of helping others.
In 1954 Joseph E. Murray and his colleagues at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, America performed the first truly successful kidney transplant from one twin to another.
An expert in social behaviour and communication says religious and cultural beliefs were to blame for the negative attitude towards organ donation.
“Culture is what people have been conditioned to do from the time they were born and if they are told that certain things are not okay then they believe so,” he said.
“Belief marks the end of reasoning. No questions are asked. To change that is to provide people with a new argument. They need to see that somebody’s life can be extended because a Good Samaritan had written that in the event of an accident somebody can harvest whatever parts are useful,” he said.
Some Africans have pledged their organs, but that is not always enough. In one case, a team sent to extract corneas from a donor was turned away by the family.
It is not the kind of fight one would want to get into with grieving relatives.
Dr Chaibva said Zimbabwe must make use of existing structures to set up a renal hospital to assist patients.
“There are hospitals like Ekusileni which can be used to set up an organ transplant unit where people can actually donate organs and they can be used on patients who need them. This can be done through private partnerships and aid from people like the Association of Healthcare Funders of Zimbabwe (AHFoZ),” he said.
He said there was duplication of services in the medical field that needed to be addressed.
“You find big names competing for laboratory, X-ray services, ultra sound etc with individuals yet they can easily branch them into serious areas like renal care and change the lives of people. If these people come together and pull resources they can certainly assist people with kidney problems. We can then talk of having donors who pledge their organs in the event of death because we will have a facility,” he said.
Dr Chaibva said in that case renal patients would get services locally and traveling costs would be significantly reduced if the Government subsidises the fees.
He further said doctors could be trained locally and then deployed to the institution that would have been opened.
It is still a long road before renal patients get service satisfaction. Furthermore organ donation also needs to be emphasised within the African societies so that lives can be saved.
