Kidney failure on the rise in Nigeria

...As calls have been made for regular medical check up

The human kidney is one essential organ responsible for the removal of waste products and excess fluids from the body. Aside this, the kidney helps in reabsorbing useful substances like glucose, protein and electrolysis into the body in precise levels needed for proper body functioning as well as produce hormones which help various organs carry out their specific functions.
Despite the critical role this organ plays, medical experts are worried on the increasing cases of kidney failure or end stage renal disease which is becoming a major issue in Nigeria giving the increasing incidence of the medical ailment.
Recent statistics indicate that kidney failure is increasing worldwide by approximately 7 to 8 percent annually even as incidence in Nigeria could be as high as 10 per million population. In addition, about 12 to 14 cases of patients aged between 20 and 50 years come for kidney dialysis in Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), idi-araba, Lagos on a weekly basis.
With a significant number of Nigerians who fall within the working population likely to be affected, medical experts have called for Nigerians to maintain healthy lifestyles, go for medical checkups giving the fact that the threat to the future of Nigeria’s economy is at stake.
Speaking at a Kidney Rejoice Program in Lagos recently, Toyin Amira, Consultant Nephrologist, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-araba, Lagos, said that kidney failure results from damages to one or both kidneys giving rise to accumulation of waste and fluids in the body.
Amira stated that the damage to the kidneys can be sudden (as in acute failure) with adequate co-progressive and irreversible insult to the kidney, often referred to as End Stage Kidney Failure.
According to Amira: “Healthy kidneys work 24 hours a day to remove waste products from the blood that build up mainly from the food that we eat. These waste products include urea, creatinine, potassium, sodium, phosphorus and fluids. However, kidney failure may show no symptoms until it reaches an advanced stage. However, some identified causes include hypertension, diabetes, glomerulonephrities, HIV/AIDS, analgesic nephropathy, certain diseases like polycystic kidney diseases, to name but a few. “
She hinted that a failure of the kidneys could lead to so many negative complications and gradually affect the other organs of the body which may eventually make the patient succumb to death except treated by dialysis or transplantation.
For Hadunni Ogunjumelo, co-coordinator, Kidney Rejoice, a non-governmental organsation targeted at creating awareness of Kidney issues in Nigeria said that “Because hypertension-often referred to as a “silent killer”-cause no symptoms and medications are expensive and may cause unwanted side effects, many find compliance with required treatment difficult and this further compound the problem of hypertension related kidney disease.
In her words “Poverty has been identified as a major problem in the bid to reduce this casualty. In advanced countries, they have extensive prevention programmes on kidney while for us in Nigeria we need to depend even more on prevention modes. Unfortunately, quite a high number of patients in Nigeria end up with no treatment option. In other words, they just wait to die due to unawareness, inability to afford treatments and inaccessibility to good treatment modes. Don’t forget that a typical renal patient has a 3 to 5 hour dialysis treatment; three times per week. For instance, in Nigeria, each session of dialysis treatment will cost an average of N25, 000. 00 (twenty-five thousand naira) or over seventy–five thousand naira per week, a cost much more than the average Nigerian worker cannot bear.”
With the World Health Organization (WHO) statistics of 2002 which put death rate from intrinsic kidney and urinary tract disease at one million and the prevalence of impaired kidney function estimated to range between 10 percent and 20 percent of adult population in most countries worldwide, it is evident that urgent attention needs to be paid to the risk factors for chronic kidney disease and to instituting interventions to slow the progression of renal disease.
For Joe Okei-Odumakin, President, Women Arise for Change initiative, whose brother was diagnosed of kidney failure three months before he died, stated that since the kidney is a sensitive organ in the body, Nigerians should endeavour to consult their health care provider for prescription of drugs as unregulated across the shelf consumption of drugs could affect the kidney without the person knowing about that.
“Make efforts to check your blood pressure since chronic high blood pressure have been identified as one of the most common causes of acute kidney failure in adult men and women; quitting cigarette smoke lowers the blood pressure, which is important for preventing kidney failure; and maintaining healthy lifestyle by checking what you eat/ drink is also important. You can reduce the strain on your kidneys by cutting all alcoholic drinks out of your lifestyle. These drinks require that your kidneys work very hard and not drinking them can help prevent kidney problems,” Okei-Odumakin added.


alexander Chiejina