The New Nation - Internet Edition

ACCORDING to experts, some forty thousand patients die of kidney failure in Bangladesh annually. About two crore people are suffering from kidney diseases. The number of patients is increasing at an alarming rate and has repeatedly doubled during the last ten years. The rate of chronic kidney disease has now risen to 18 percent. If the trend continues, the rate may rise to some 30 percent within another decade. One popular idea about the cause of the disease is less intake of water. But in many cases the disease is caused by viral attack. Diabetes and high blood pressure also damage kidneys. In addition to the above causes, some wrong practices of the people due to lack of awareness are also responsible for higher incidence of diseases.

Indiscriminate use of painkillers, antibiotics and other medicines without advice from qualified doctors is another key reason for kidney problems. Adulterated food containing harmful substances also induce the disease. Due to an inadequate number of specialists and high cost of treatment, in most of the cases, the disease cannot be detected at early stages. Treatment of kidney disease is too costly for the common people to afford. At least Taka two lakh is needed every year for a patient to undergo dialysis twice a week. Kidney transplantation is also very costly.

Awareness among the masses about the causes of the disease, ways of its prevention and treatment should be urgently increased for checking its spread. People must be discouraged from taking medicines by way of self-prescription. To help avoid this, medical services at cheap rates should be made available to the people. Physicians should also refrain from giving wholesale prescriptions. General practitioners appear to be liberal in respect of the prescription of pain killers even for simple headache, but graphologists find such drugs dangerous for kidneys.