By offering a kidney, Nawel has allowed her husband, Boubaker, to finish with 16 years of dialysis, ” a renaissance.” But in Algeria, as elsewhere in the Maghreb, patients suffer or die for lack of transplant, often because of regulations and long-standing misconceptions which discourage the donations.
Restrictive laws hamper the removal of the deceased, coupled with a reluctance to accept cultural or religious — as doctors, and muslim theologians consider it yet unfounded.
So, because he believed to be a risk to his wife, Boubaker Ziani, an Algerian man of 47 years old, has long denied that body that Nawel proposed to him. She could not bear to see her husband weakened, unable to bear children or play with them. It was finally resolved to accept, in the absence of alternative.
Mr. Ziani was operated at the university hospital Center of Batna, 435 km east of Algiers, which became one of the two “centres of reference” for kidney transplants in Algeria, thanks to a young medical team is multidisciplinary. “I’m like a new-born,” he explained to AFP with tears in her eyes, after this life-saving transplant.
In a consulting room, Abderahmane, 47 years old, will finish with 24 years of dialysis thanks to the kidney donated by his mother. “The dialysis has dominated my existence. I want to be able to rest from this machine and live “, he says.
His illness is hereditary. One of his brothers, non-grafted, is death. Another one is on dialysis for the past two years.
