This is why I'm using gastric balloon to lose weight, Fatma Chidagaya

Fatma Chidagaya was once petite but gained weight over five years, reaching 114kg. March 12, 2026. [File Courtesy]

On March 12, Fatma Chidagaya walked into Avane Plastic Surgery Hospital in Gigiri, Nairobi, sat in Dr Pranav Pancholi’s clinic, and swallowed a capsule-sized balloon.

“I’m so enthusiastic about this. I am hoping that, finally, I will get back to a healthy weight,” Fatma told The Standard.

Commercially known as the Allurion Balloon, it is a gastric balloon deployed inside the stomach of a patient who needs to lose weight.

Dr Pranav Pancholi oversees the Allurion gastric balloon procedure for Fatma Chidagaya. [File Courtesy]

The balloon is made of polyurethane, packaged into a swallowable capsule and connected to a thin tube. Through the tube, the balloon is inflated with water, expanding and taking up space.

“We stop eating when food fills the stomach, exerts pressure on the stomach walls, and the nerve endings send a message to the brain, signalling that one is full,” Dr Pancholi explains.

“My journey to a healthy weight starts today. With the balloon in my stomach, I will be eating less and less. But I will also be re-wiring my brain and conditioning my body to be satisfied with smaller portions,” Fatma says.

Her journey to this moment began about a year and a half ago. She was at her wits' end. 

Dr Shaaban Said, Head of Plastic Surgery at Avane Plastic Surgery Hospital, alongside his colleague Dr Pranav Pancholi, Head of Cosmetics at the same facility. [File Courtesy]

“There’s a notion that when you go to a hospital like this to get assistance with your weight loss, you’re looking for shortcuts. But people who say that haven’t really walked in your shoes,'' she says.

“I know people who have been there. Trust me, people do try. Medical weight-loss procedures carry some risks. Nobody would willingly say, ‘I want to do this,’ unless advised by a doctor.”

The events that led to this moment are still vivid in her mind. Over the years, Fatma had been gradually gaining weight. By 2024, it was visible whenever she looked in the mirror. The weight gain had sapped her energy levels.

“The kilos had become more than I could handle. I couldn’t do simple things like climbing the stairs. I would be gasping for air just from one flight of stairs. I’d be short of breath because of the weight alone.”

Fatma, a journalist and news anchor, says she had reached a point in her life where she was keen to grow in her career: to take on more challenging roles and move up the professional ladder.

Yet she was feeling increasingly fatigued. If it wasn’t the shortness of breath after taking the stairs, it was the pain flaring in her knees as she balanced on her Girley stilettos.

She admits to feeling unhealthy. She needed change — and fast.

“Excessive weight leads to laziness. I just want to rest all the time. Yet this is the time I should be energetic, pursuing my dreams beyond where I am.”

So, at some point last year, Fatma picked up her phone and called Dr Shaaban Saidi, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon she had interacted with before.

Her reason for calling was simple: ‘I need to lose weight. What are my options besides exercising and dieting?’

By then, Fatma had accepted that “exercise and dieting” had failed to restore her to a healthy weight.

“Before I got here, I had already tried the obvious. I did intermittent fasting — not eating for at least 16 hours a day and only eating within the remaining eight.

“At one point, I was doing OMAD (one meal a day). For four months, I spent whole days without food. I only ate at 6 pm. Shockingly, I barely lost two kilos; the scale hardly moved,” she says.

She then tried the gym: daily exercise, which proved twice as hard. “The thing about exercise is, once you are heavy, it’s actually quite difficult to exercise. I would pick the skipping rope and get on with it. But even before I clocked 20 jumps, I would be struggling to breathe.

“Also, when you are heavy, your joints suffer beneath that weight. At the end of every session, I was sore and in pain, yet the next day I had to go to work.

“It’s not easy to exercise when you’re heavy. Really, it’s not. Chances are you give up more than you stay committed,” she says.

Just before calling Dr Shaaban, Fatma was considering another option: Ozempic, the wonder drug many A-list celebrities are using to lose weight.

Calling Dr Shaaban was the culmination of failing to achieve her goals through conventional methods.

“Knowing that I am a plastic surgeon, I suspect she thought I would offer quick-fix solutions like liposuction or gastric bypass. I called her to meet not only me but Dr Pancholi as well. We work together to make sure that we help the patient address the problem effectively and not ask for procedures that may not work for their body profile.

“So, we took her history, weighed her, measured her height and performed some medical tests to figure out what would work best for her. Out of a few options – Ozempic included – she chose to go with the gastric balloon,” says Dr Shaaban.

Other medical weight loss procedures available in Kenya include: gastric sleeve, gastric bypass, and gastric band – all surgical procedures that reduce stomach size and curtail excessive food intake.

Modern technology

“The balloon is a modern technology rising from an older version that used to be placed in the stomach through endoscopy. The traditional gastric balloon requires that the patient be taken to the theatre, put under anaesthesia, and then the balloon be placed in their stomach. This is costlier and also riskier,” Dr Pancholi, the head of cosmetics at the hospital, says.

He explains: “The way it works is that the patient swallows the capsule with water. The process takes approximately 30 seconds. By way of X-ray, we establish the placement of the balloon. And then we fill it up with water through a thin tube attached to it. Afterwards, it is detached and the tube is pulled out. The patient will be discharged and allowed to go home the same day.

“The average stomach has around 0.9 litres of space. The volume of the balloon is 0.55 litres. So you only have around 0.35 litres left for food. The balloon stays in the stomach for anything between four and six months, during which time the patient would have lost some weight. It then disintegrates naturally and comes out with stool.”

Weighing 114Kg with a height of 5ft 7”, Fatma’s BMI (body mass index) is at 39, which is classified as ‘Class 3 Obese’.

BMI is the ratio of weight relative to height (squared), which is used to measure health status in adults. A BMI greater than or equal to 25 is classified as overweight, and greater than or equal to 30, obese. Normal BMI ranges from 18 to 24.

“I may not be certain about many things regarding my body, but I am certain about this one thing: I don’t want to be obese,” Fatma says.

While she is primarily concerned about her health, she admits that she also wants to look good. Evidence suggests that women – more than men – are body-conscious.

In Dr Shaaban’s line of work, “there’s reconstructive surgery and aesthetic surgery.” Reconstructive surgery corrects physical issues and improves health and quality of life, such as repairing cleft lips. Aesthetic surgery addresses appearance for those seeking an ideal look.

Building confidence

“More than 90 per cent of patients who come to me for aesthetic procedures are women. The reality is that a woman will quickly take note of the slightest weight gain. A man, on the other hand, with a potbelly, is barely bothered,” he says.

To which Fatma says: “Forget about weight: the make-up industry exists to make money off of women, not men. You would never find a man putting lipsticks and eye shadow – at least in the traditional sense of the male psyche. Women do these daily.”

Before you make your own stereotypical conclusion, she says, it has nothing to do with an inferiority complex or pleasing men.

“It’s who we are. It’s what makes us happy. A woman likes to look good for herself. Looking good builds her confidence. I know that if I do my eyebrows a certain way, if I lose weight a certain way, if I look a certain way, I look better, and I am much more confident.

“It’s not, like, ‘Oh, I want to walk around so that people can turn their heads’. No, it’s for ourselves. That’s why we spend so much money buying original [make-up] products. Plus, some women – like me – looking presentable is part of my job.”

Fatma’s journey to losing weight will see her shuttle back to Avane at least once every month for the next four to six months, for the doctors to check on her progress. It’s been almost a month since she took the balloon and she has already dropped eight kilogrammes.

The cost of taking up the balloon – plus accompanying clinical consultation and post-installation checkups – is USD3,500: approximately Sh455,000 by today’s exchange rates.

Some health insurance covers pay for patients who have been clinically diagnosed as obese.

Kenya Demographics Health Survey (KDHS) 2022.