World Kidney Day: Be aware of Kidney diseases

The theme of World Kidney Day 2019 is “Kidney health for everyone, everywhere.”

Bhubaneswar: Today is World Kidney Day (WKD). Every year March 14 is observed as WKD. The day is all about raising awareness about the importance of taking care of kidneys.

Observation

World Kidney Day is celebrated across the globe. On this day people organise awareness campaigns, discussions about the importance of kidneys, causes of kidney diseases, risk factors associated with them, and how to survive with a kidney disease.

World Kidney Day 2019

The theme of World Kidney Day 2019 is “Kidney health for everyone, everywhere.” This year, World Kidney Day sets out to raise awareness of the high and increasing burden of kidney diseases worldwide and the need for strategies for kidney diseases prevention and management. Kidney Health for Everyone Everywhere calls for universal health coverage (UHC) for prevention and early treatment of kidney disease.

Kidney diseases victims

As per reports about 850 million people across the world are suffering from kidney diseases. Chronic kidney diseases have come up as a big reason of death, with 2.4 million deaths per year. Around 1.7 people are estimated to die annually because of Acute kidney injury (AKI).

As per reports CKD and AKI are important contributors to increased morbidity and mortality from other diseases and risk factors including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, as well as infections such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and hepatitis.

Causes of Kidney deseases

Chronic Kidney Diseases and Acute Kidney Injuries often arise from the social conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age including poverty, gender discrimination, lack of education, occupational hazards and pollution among others.

Treatment

Transplantation is considered the most cost-effective treatment of CKD. However, it has high set up costs with regards to infrastructure and requires highly specialized teams, availability of organ donors and cannot be done without dialysis backup. However, physical and legal infrastructure requirements and cultural bias against organ donation often present barriers in many countries, making dialysis the default option.

Appeal of the day

WKD appeals everyone to propagate for concrete measures in every country to improve kidney care. So, how it can be achieved:

  • Encourage and adopt healthy lifestyles (access to clean water, exercise, healthy diet, tobacco control. Many types of kidney diseases can be prevented, delayed and / or kept under control when appropriate prevention measures are in place.
  • Make screening for kidney diseases a primary healthcare intervention including access to identification tools (e.g. urine and blood tests).
  • Ensure kidney patients receive basic health services they need (e.g. blood pressure and cholesterol control, essential medications) to delay disease progression without suffering financial hardship.
  • Call for transparent policies governing equitable and sustainable access to advanced health care services (e.g. dialysis and transplantation) and better financial protection (e.g. subsidies) as more resources become available.

Breaking down socioeconomic barriers and expanding access to comprehensive services in order to meet the needs of the population is essential to guarantee equitable kidney care and increase quality.

Also read: Youth Found Hanging From Tree In Balasore

You might also like