Doctors in Ghana are reportedly close to declaring kidney disease as an epidemic in the country.
Chairman of the Dialysis Services Foundation, Prosper Bani, made this known in an interview with the media over the weekend during a kidney awareness walk organized by the Foundation and held under the theme:
Walking for healthy kidneys.”
He noted that there were rising numbers of Ghanaians battling with kidney disease across the country.
According to him, judges, doctors, lawyers and Members of Parliament were all at risk of kidney disease.
He mentioned substance abuse, alcohol and poor eating habits as major contributors to kidney disease.
Mr. Bani added cost of treatment has become a serious burden for patients.
He stated that patients with acute kidney ailments have to go on dialysis three times a week, with each dialysis section costing GH¢ 320 at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
He has therefore called for a healthy lifestyle amongst Ghanaians.
Dialysis Services Foundation is working to educate the nation about the menace of end-stage kidney disease and associated illnesses.
The Foundation also intends to support research that will help prevent, treat kidney-related diseases.
Already, the Foundation is supporting needy patients who cannot afford dialysis and intends to increase its capacity to support more of such groups of people whose only other alternative is death.
The Awareness Walk has a goal to reach out to one thousand people with this message and raise some urgently needed funds to assist some of these critically ill patients.
The initial target is to raise GH¢ 3 million through these initial campaigns.
Source: Daily Guide
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. |
I thank God for reading this article today, this has been an issue which I believe needs urgent concern and care. My brother is a patient on dialysis who visits the Korlebu dialysis center trice a week, without dialysis the next option will be death. In fact if you have not visited the center you will not know what some citizenry are going through. He has to be on the dialysis machine trice a week. Apart from the high cost that he has to bear every week, the frustrations that he has to go through on his visit days is terrible. The dialysis unit lack these dialysis machines If I am right they have about 10 of these machines and recently about 3 have broken down. These few machines runs through out the week. During each section one has to sit on the machine for 3 hours. They have grouped the patients in sections 1st, 2nd 3rd and4th etc sections each day. Your section Will determine when you will be on the machine and the time to leave the center, normally evening sections runs into the next morning. He leaves home 6pm and comes back at 4am. Patients have to sit and wait till their turn. Aside those that are not on admission there are patients at the wards too who have to go through these same machines. When you are on admission at the ward they normally pick you at dawn because of the queue. It is quite frustrating. Moreover, the waiting area is bad, the chairs for patients to sit on have one side packed with concrete blocks and it is terrible. Already, the patients are not living their normal lives and for them to survive on this earth they will have to wait for long hours on these half benches is unbearable. Wheel chairs to carry patients is another matter, if not broken then rusted. I am in support of this campaign and much attention has to given to this unit, the machines are not enough, the government should pay attention to this unit like the article stated kidney disease does not know a lawyer, politician or doctor. In my brother’s case I can say he was a workaholic who would do practically anything for his job but today he cannot even go to work, his time is much spent at Korlebu.