During the marking of this year’s World Kidney Day (WKD), medical experts and other stakeholders used the occasion to raise the alarm on the spike in the number of people with kidney diseases in the country and the need for more awareness programmes on the deadly condition. They also stated that hypertension, diabetes, herbal concoctions and abuse of pain killers as major causes of kidney diseases in the country.
In order to prevent the disease, a Consultant Physician and Nephrologist at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), Dr. Pedro Emem-Chioma, advised that Nigerians should avoid herbal medications, concoctions and even pain killers. The WKD is marked every second Thursday of March annually to raise awareness of kidney disease, preventive measures as well as management options.
The theme for this year’s celebration, “kidney health for all, bridging the knowledge gap to better kidney care” is very apt particularly in Nigeria and some other African countries where the disease has taken a great toll in recent times due to lack of adequate health care systems and poor funding of the health sector generally. Instructively, the World Kidney Day Joint Steering Committee has declared 2022 to be the year of “Kidney for All.” The committee specifically calls on all people the world over to work to bridge the knowledge gaps to better kidney care.
The committee says that the 2022 campaign will focus on efforts to increase education and awareness about kidney health and the need to reduce the high CKD knowledge gap at all levels of kidney care. According to factsheet on WKD, chronic kidney disease (CKD) is common and harmful and it affects one out of 10 adult people globally. CKD can equally be deadly if left untreated.
As kidney disease-related mortality continues to rise yearly, it is projected to be the 5th leading cause of death by 2040. The WKD steering committee has called on everyone across the world, including political leaders, to not only be aware of the disease, but to also actively know their own kidney measures.
They should also know their blood pressure and the treatment objectives. In Nigeria, everyone, especially our policy makers, need to know the ways in which more attention can be paid to the kidney in formulating government’s policies that can benefit the patients and the healthcare budgets.
Considering the knowledge gap that exists in the care of the condition, it has become more imperative to create more awareness about the condition even among the physicians and those suffering from it. This has become necessary because of the fact that the knowledge gap is stifling the fight against the disease and increasing the mortality associated with the disease.
Since the disease is associated with diet and lifestyles, we enjoin Nigerians to adopt healthy diet and have access to clean water, tobacco control and climate change control in order to maintain kidney health. Besides, kidney health can be enhanced through keeping fit and being active, eating a healthy diet, reducing salt intake, checking and controlling blood sugar, blood pressure, taking appropriate fluid, avoid smoking and avoid taking over-the-counter anti-inflammatory and pain killer pills regularly.
Available statistics show that over 20 million Nigerians have various stages of CKD. The prevalence of the disease documented in developing and developed countries range from 2.5 per cent to as high as 35.8 per cent in the elderly population. The leading causes of the disease in Nigeria include high blood pressure, diabetes and glomerulonephritis or kidney inflammation.
The cost of treating the disease is reportedly so high in Nigeria. That is why the government should intervene and subsidise the treatment, especially for those who cannot afford it. At the same time, the government should inject more funds in the health sector to enable it shoulder the enormous health challenges.
With political leaders embarking on medical tourism, and the brain drain in the sector, less attention is being paid to our comatose health care delivery system. There is need to train more experts on the disease while serious attention is paid to the development of the nation’s primary healthcare system, adjudged by medical experts, including those in government, to be weak at this point in time.
A weak primary health care system can only exacerbate the nation’s disease burden which stands at 70 per cent at the primary care level. All tiers of government must work in concert to provide adequate health care system to all Nigerians.