Dr. Chimezie Okwuonu, the Chief Medical Director of Abia State Specialist Hospital and Diagnostic Centre, has been elected to the board of the International Society for Apheresis (ISFA). He is the first doctor based in Africa and only the second Black person ever to hold this position.
Dr. Okwuonu, an expert in kidney diseases and transplants, was elected during an international meeting of the ISFA held in Bangkok, Thailand. His election has been praised by many in Nigeria and other countries.
This achievement is viewed as a significant step forward for African doctors in global medical leadership. It places Dr. Okwuonu in a position where he can help shape policies and enhance access to advanced blood treatments across Africa.
In his response, Dr. Okwuonu said he felt honoured and promised to work hard. He plans to focus on raising awareness and making apheresis more available, especially in underdeveloped parts of Africa.
“It’s a great honour,” he said. “I want more people in Africa to know about and benefit from apheresis. This treatment saves lives, and we must make it easier for people to get it.”
Apheresis is a special medical treatment where harmful parts of a person’s blood are removed. It is used to treat serious infections and autoimmune diseases.
Unlike regular dialysis, apheresis can remove larger and more complex harmful substances from the blood. It is useful in treating blood diseases, kidney problems, and critical illnesses.
Dr. Okwuonu said apheresis is very important in kidney transplants. It helps in three key ways: preparing patients before a transplant, treating rejection of the new kidney, and allowing transplants even when the donor’s blood type is not a perfect match.
“Many patients cannot get a kidney transplant because they have too many antibodies that make it hard to find a match,” he explained.
He said these antibodies often come from previous blood transfusions, pregnancies, or earlier transplants, which are common among Nigerian kidney patients.
“To help such patients, we use apheresis to remove those antibodies and increase the chance of finding a matching donor,” he added.
He also explained that after the transplant, some patients face a serious condition called antibody-mediated rejection (AMR), where their immune system attacks the new kidney. Apheresis is used to treat this too.
Dr. Okwuonu said apheresis also allows doctors to perform kidney transplants even when the patient and donor have different blood types, which could help more people get transplants.
“What apheresis does is lower blood group antibodies to a safe level, so the body doesn’t reject the new kidney,” he said.
As a board member, Dr. Okwuonu will help create and update global guidelines on how apheresis is done. He will also support international partnerships to improve results for patients worldwide.
“My job includes speaking for Africa in global meetings, reviewing medical standards, and making sure all countries get fair treatment,” he said.
Dr. Okwuonu also works at the Federal Medical Centre in Umuahia, where he leads quality care efforts. He performed the first successful kidney transplant in Southeast Nigeria in 2017 and is still the only certified transplant nephrologist in that region.
He said Africa faces a growing number of diseases like lupus, sickle cell complications, and kidney failure, and this makes apheresis even more important and urgent.
“We need to overcome the cost and technology problems that prevent many Africans from getting this treatment. Our people deserve better,” he said.
He promised to help train medical workers, encourage research, and bring in better tools to make apheresis more available and safe in African hospitals.
Since the news of his election, Nigerian doctors have praised Dr. Okwuonu, saying his new position shows his hard work and commitment to improving kidney care.
Many believe that having Dr. Okwuonu on the ISFA board will give African doctors a greater voice in global medical decisions.
The ISFA conference in Bangkok was attended by health professionals from all over the world, including kidney doctors, blood specialists, nurses, and social workers. They shared knowledge and discussed new medical ideas.
Experts at the meeting talked about the challenges of using apheresis in different countries and how to make it work better in places with limited resources.
During his presentation at the conference, Dr. Okwuonu warned about the side effects of apheresis in kidney transplant patients, especially low calcium levels and the risk of infections.
He shared the results of a study from the University of Virginia Health in the U.S., which looked at 860 apheresis sessions done on 131 patients between 2017 and 2022.
The study found that about 17% of procedures had side effects. The most common and dangerous was hypocalcaemia — very low calcium in the blood.
Dr. Okwuonu explained that symptoms of low calcium can range from tingling and numbness to seizures, heart problems, unconsciousness, and even death.
He said the problem is caused by citrate-based drugs used to prevent blood clots during the procedure, which also remove calcium from the blood.
The risk increases when doctors use both citrate and fresh frozen plasma (FFP) during apheresis. This combination makes calcium levels drop even more.
He also mentioned that using albumin, another fluid used in apheresis, reduces important immune proteins, making it harder for the body to fight infections.
“Immunoglobulin G (IgG), a key immune protein, lasts about 22 days. So after just a few apheresis sessions, a patient could remain vulnerable to infections for weeks,” he warned.
He said that if a patient already has an infection, this could cause the treatment to fail unless doctors use additional immune therapy to help.
Other possible problems he mentioned include low blood volume, bleeding, heart rhythm issues, allergic reactions, and infections related to the catheter used in the procedure.
He said that access issues with the catheter, such as blockages or infections, happen in about 1% of all apheresis treatments.
Dr. Okwuonu explained that the type of blood thinner, fluid replacement, and the machine method (centrifugal or membrane-based) all affect how safe the procedure is.
Centrifugal machines may cause more bleeding because they remove more platelets, while membrane-based machines can cause allergic reactions due to the chemicals used to clean them.
He said that apheresis is generally safe, but doctors must be very careful, especially with transplant patients who are more at risk of side effects.
“Apheresis is very useful in complex kidney transplant cases. But doctors must balance the benefits with the risks and use smart strategies to protect patients,” he advised.
Dr. Okwuonu said his kidney transplant program in Southeast Nigeria serves over 36 million people. Although it performs few transplants, it provides critical care in a region with limited kidney services.
He has long played a role in shaping kidney care policy in Nigeria. Since 2018, he has spoken at many national nephrology conferences and helped guide healthcare discussions.
He helped revise Nigeria’s national guidelines for treating chronic kidney disease, which were published in 2023 in the Tropical Journal of Nephrology.
After that, he joined a Ministry of Health team that created national guidelines for organ and tissue transplants, which were completed in 2025 and now guide transplant care in Nigeria.
Currently, he serves on two major committees in Nigeria: one that sets dialysis standards and another that develops guidelines for treating sudden kidney failure.
