NAIROBI, Kenya July 24 – A government-appointed committee has called for urgent action to save thousands of Kenyans in desperate need of organ transplants, revealing that the country’s system is barely functioning and in some cases, not functioning at all.In its final report , the Independent Investigative Committee on Tissue and Organ Transplant Services (IICTOTS) has recommended the creation of a National Organ Transplant Authority and the urgent rollout of a deceased donor program. These, the committee said, are the first critical steps in fixing a broken system that has left over 12,500 patients with end-stage kidney disease and little to no hope of survival.Despite Kenya having legalized organ donation from deceased people back in 2017 through the Health Act, not a single transplant has been done using organs from a deceased person. Instead, fewer than 160 transplants take place each year all from living donors, mostly family members far below the national need.“This has created an unsustainable and ethically risky situation,” said Committee Chair Elizabeth Bukusi. “We cannot continue to rely on live donors alone. We need a fair, safe, and transparent system that gives every Kenyan a chance.”The committee painted a bleak picture of Kenya’s transplant services poorly regulated, underfunded, and vulnerable to abuse. In particular, the report raised questions about practices at Mediheal Hospital in Eldoret, where donor and recipient records were found to be missing key information like nationality, sparking fears of organ trafficking and transplant tourism.But the report went beyond individual hospitals and pointed a finger at government inaction. It found that only 25 percent of transplant centres had full medical teams, and none offered mental health support for donors. There’s no national registry, no official protocol for confirming brain death, and no public education campaigns to inform Kenyans about the importance of donation.“This is not just a medical issue,” the report reads. “It’s a failure of governance.”To turn things around, the committee laid out several urgent reforms including establishing a National Organ Transplant Authority to oversee all organ transplants in the country. As part of the reforms, a deceased donor program will be launched across public hospitals to boost access to life-saving transplants. In addition, nationwide public awareness campaigns will be rolled out to encourage voluntary organ donation. Authorities have also ordered investigations into possible illegal activity within the current transplant system.The committee also urged the Ministry of Health to look to countries like South Africa, which has a more advanced and ethical transplant framework, and was used as a benchmark during the committee’s fact-finding mission.“This should be a turning point,” Bukusi said. “We have the law. What we need now is the will to act.”