Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) has made another milestone after being the first public health care facility in the country to conduct a weight reduction surgery.
The operation, known as Bariatric Surgery, enables patients to have sustained weight loss and also normalize blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, resolve joint problems among other benefits.
According to KNH’s acting Chief Executive Officer Evanson Kamuri, Kenyans with weight problems no longer have to go abroad or visit expensive medical facilities to carry out weight reduction surgeries.
“I encourage Kenyans grappling with weight issues to visit Kenyatta because the government has built three more complexes for minor surgeries and now we can comfortably conduct three surgeries in a day,” Kamuri explained.
He disclosed that multidisciplinary team of surgeons, doctors, and nurses in KNH successfully carried out the Bariatric surgery on 66-yr old John Muthama, who before, had been diagnosed with class 3 obesity.
Muthama was weighing 176kgs with a BMI of 59.5kg/m2 and had developed multiple problems as a result of obesity.
Lead surgeon Kennedy Odede, Muthama revealed that Muthama had explored all other methods of losing weight and they were ineffective.
He underwent sleeve gastrectomy, a procedure involving removal of about 80 per cent of the stomach leaving a tube-shaped stomach the size and shape of a banana.
This restricts the amount of food a person is able to consume which consequently leads to weight loss.
The surgery which was performed in one and half hours costs less than Ksh 500,000, while if performed abroad, the patient will have to cough up nothing less than KsH1.5 million.
Nonetheless, Dr Odede called upon Kenyans to embrace healthy lifestyles to avoid being obese.
