Kidney failures cause around 40,000 deaths in Bangladesh each year, with more than 90% patients dying without receiving proper treatment, speakers at a workshop said yesterday.
The number of chronic kidney diseases has also been gradually increasing in the country; with diabetes, blood pressure and nephritis causing more than 80% of the chronic kidney diseases, which eventually lead to failure of the organ as well as causing deaths from heart disease and brain stroke.
Speaking at the workshop titled “The rule of mass media to create mass awareness regarding deadly kidney disease and prevention,” Professor MA Samad, president of Kidney Awareness Monitoring and Prevention Society (KAMPS), said patients who suffered kidney failure had to live on regular dialysis (haemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis) or by transplanting their kidney.
He said patients had to spend around Tk4-6 lakh annually for haemodialysis, Tk4-5 lakh for peritoneal dialysis; while the costs for a kidney transplant was Tk3.5 lakh to Tk7 lakh and over 1 lakh taka was also needed annually for medicine.
Saying kidney disease was deadly but preventable, Samad said it was possible to prevent kidney failure if it was detected during stage four of the total five stages of kidney failure.
Speakers at the programme, organised by the KAMPS at Dhaka’s Biam auditorium, also said the country has around two crore patients who suffer from different kidney diseases, while five people died every hour because of kidney failure. Different surveys have also found that 16-18% of the patients suffered from chronic kidney diseases.
There is a huge shortage of trained workforce to ensure proper treatment of kidney diseases, with the country currently having less than 100 nephrologists, 100 urologists, 20 kidney transplant surgeons, 200 dialysis nurses and less than 20 dialysis engineer.
State Minister for Land Saifuzzaman Chowdhury was the chief guest at the programme, while other speakers included Kazi Rafiqul Abedin, associate professor of urology department of National Institute of Kidney Diseases Hospital.
Addressing the programme, the state minister said mass media could help create mass awareness about the deadly kidney diseases.