PESHAWAR, Jan 22: An elderly woman who underwent liver transplant in China has formed a charity organisation, Advance Medical Solutions (AMS), offering free advisory service to patients seeking similar treatment.

Jehan Ara Habib Khan, 67, was diagnosed a patient of liver cirrhosis and the only option she had was to undergo an operation for liver transplant.

Lucky to have a doctor son named Jawad Habib Khan, she was better placed to look for different options for liver transplant.

“After a thorough search, I selected China because of cost-effectiveness, short waiting-period, high success rate and multiple centres there,” she told Dawn.

She said she had also contacted medical facilities in the US, the UK and other European countries, but found China as the most appropriate.

It took only a month in China to get a liver transplant done at a cost of $50,000 whereas the waiting period in other countries was about three years and the cost ranged between $50,000 and $100,000, she pointed out.

“I had full liver transplant done at China’s Ruijin Hospital Shanghai in April 2005. Now that I am hale and hearty, I want to help others,” she said.

About the launch of the AMS, she said that since her return from China, people, suffering from liver ailments, were approaching her for advice.

“So manypeople approached me to seek advice that I thought of setting up an organisation to help people suffering from terminal liver diseases,” she said, adding that her organisation had so far facilitated 15 patients, who had had a successful liver transplant in China.

The patients belonged to Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, the NWFP and Afghanistan, she said.

She said it was her mission to offer free advisory services to people for transplant of liver and other organs and win the blessings of God.

AMS is working in collaboration with Enhanced Medical Technology of China, a subsidiary of the Texas division of Chicago University and Medical School Washington operating in 20 countries since 1980. It has facilitated 500 cases with the help of 60 transplant surgeons.

“Before sending the liver patients to hospitals in China, we document their history. Patient-doctors communication is also facilitated. We charge nothing and consider it a service,” said Jehan Ara, whose husband died of lung cancer in 1995.

She said due to its large population, China had sufficient organ resources. After the US, China was the second country in terms of the number of transplantation cases, she said, adding that some 500 transplants were done in 10 centres in the country annually, she said.

“China offers transplant of pancreas, kidney, heart, lung, cornea and bone-marrow,” she said, adding: “The survival rate in China is 88 per cent, which is second to the US where this figure is 90.”

In China, foreign patients were given priority, she said, adding that most of the transplant centres were located in Shangnai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chongging, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu.

She said that patients from Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Afghanistan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, the US, the Middle East and many European countries had visited China to have their transplant done during a stay of two to eight weeks.

“Later, patients are advised treatment on lab reports for one year. They also need to get anti-rejection drugs,” she said.