The atmosphere at Mater Dei Hospital’s renal unit was tense. A patient in intensive care had died and several organs were being offered for transplantation, including the kidneys.

This was something the recipients had dreamed of for years. A 49-year-old man had been on peritoneal dialysis for nine years and a woman, 55, on haemodialysis for five. They are the fortunate ones.

Our patients might look healthy but there is a lot of suffering and compromises they have to make

There are about 250 patients who receive dialysis but only about 80 are medically suitable for a transplant, assuming a matching donor can be found.

About 15 transplants are completed every year, meaning the majority of patients face an agonising wait, knowing their life is dictated by a strict dialysis schedule.

“The problem is that many patients have a cocktail of diseases, ranging from diabetes to high blood pressure and heart failure. This makes it impossible for them to undergo a transplant,” said nursing officer Paul Calleja.

“Our patients might look healthy enough but there is a lot of suffering and there are a lot of compromises that they have to make, not just for a short period of time but for the rest of their life, unless they get a transplant. We have patients who have been waiting 15 years for a suitable kidney.”

Dialysis is punishing: patients must attend a four-hour session three times a week.

This made it virtually impossible to have a full-time job until the unit started to offer an 8pm ‘twilight shift’.

The LifeCycle Foundation used funds raised from its 2,000-kilometre cycling challenges to buy a van to pick up patients and drive them home after the sessions.

Some of the LifeCycle 2013 participants posing for the camera in Estonia last year.

“It has made a tremendous difference because it frees up patients during the day, so they can continue with their normal life,” Mr Calleja said.

The Mater Dei unit copes with 32 patients at a time but some can complete the sessions in their own homes, after suitable training, using equipment bought by the foundation.

“It makes a tremendous difference to be able to stay at home with your family, in your own environment,” Mr Calleja added.

Transplant kidneys can come from a corpse but it is not enough for the deceased to have indicated that they want their organs to be donated. Organs can only be recovered from donors who die in particular medical circumstances and only after being declared brain dead by two specialists.

The best bet for a transplant is an organ from a relative, as a match is much more likely and the success rate is over 95 per cent. Nor is a transplant the end of the story.

Assuming the body does not reject the organ, most only last an average of 15-20 years.

One of the unit’s patients has had two transplants and is now awaiting his third.

“You have to remember that kidney failure can occur because of many reasons. We had one patient who was born with it and who had to wait until she was 18 to get a transplant.

“But there is no doubt that the major causes of kidney failure are diabetes and hypertension and the numbers are increasing. If it were not for the complications caused by diabetes, we would have half the numbers of dialysis patients,” Mr Calleja said.

Malta has the second highest percentage of diabetics in the Mediterranean, surpassed by Cyprus. According to the National Statistics Office report for 2013, there are more than 30,000 known diabetics and up to 8,000 more who are undiagnosed.

This year, nurse Frankie Aquilina is accompanying the Actavis Life Cycle Challenge to Japan, which will once again raise funds for the unit.

www.lifecyclechallenge.com