Experts at a roundtable on Saturday stressed the need for reducing the prices of medicine and lowering the tax to import the machineries related to detection and providing treatment to critical diseases.
They also urged the government to take step to reduce the prices of per dialysis for the kidney failure patients at Tk 1500.
The experts said at least 68 percent of death risk from kidney related diseases can be reduced through only changing the day to day life style of the people and the habits mainly include walking at least 30 minutes every day, eating sufficient fruits and vegetables, controlling weight and shun smoking.
The people can avoid most of their ailment for the whole of their lives being accustomed with these sorts of habits, they added.
They opined that the menace of the kidney disease has to be reduced by preventing this disease and for this there is no alternative to raising mass awareness among people.
Voluntery organisation, Kidney Awareness Monitoring and Prevention Society (KAMPS) organised the roundtable meeting to mark the World Kidney Day-2016, styled “Kidney disease & children: Act early to Prevent it” at National Press Club.
Chairman of Ganashashthya Kendra Dr. Zafrullah Chowdhury, Chairman of Kidney Foundation Prof Dr. Harun or Rashid, President of Bangladesh Renal Association Professor Dr. Feroz Khan, Chairman of Pediatric Nephrology Society of Bangladesh Prof. Dr. Md. Moazzem Hossain, Secretary General of the Pediatric Nephrology Society of Bangladesh, Prof. Dr. Mohammad Hanif, Director of the National Institute of Kidney Diseases and Urology, Professor Dr. Nurul Huda Lelin, Managing Director and CEO of the Social Islami Bank Ltd. (SIBL), Md Shafiqur Rahman, former Captain of Bangladesh National Cricket Team, Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, former Vice Chancellor of Presidency University and renowned Macro Economist, Professor Dr. Muhammad Mahboob Ali and so on.
Dr. Zafrullah Chowdhury said abnormal price rise of medicine and many irregularities in health sector is happening on the nose dip of the government but still the government is sleeping.
He mentioned that people get free dialysis in many developed countries like Taiwan, Iran, Quba etc., although it’s not possible to our government to offer free dialysis but it’s possible to bring it down to a certain level.
Chairman of Kidney Foundation, eminent Nephrologist, Prof. Dr. Harun or Rashid said if it is possible to conduct screening and tests of diseases like, kidney, diabetes, heart attacks at the primary healthcare centers in the rural areas then it is possible to prevent all these critical diseases in most cases.
In his keynote paper, head of kidney department of Lab Aid Specialised Hospital and chairman of KAMPS, Prof Dr. MA Samad said the main objective of observing the World Kidney Day is to aware people across the world about the fear and sufferings of the kidney diseases, detecting kidney disease early and treating the patients and get them accustomed with sound lifestyle.
“Worldwide the prevalence of kidney disease is very high. In Bangladesh about 2 crore of people are suffering from any sorts of kidney diseases, the treatment cost of this disease is so high that at least 10 percent of patients cannot aford it, as a reslt most of the country’s kidney patients die without treatment, whereas only the awareness can prevent nearly 50 to 60 percent of kidney failure. For this what is needed is to be habituated with sound lifestyle from early of childhood”.
Mentioning that the theme of this year’s World Kidney Day is “Kidney Disease & Children: Act early to prevent it!”, he said the children can be affected by the killing kidney disease starting from the very normal and treatable kidney disease. There have many kind of kidney disease that starts from childhood but remain hidden and later it turn as kidney failure. – Staff Reporter
