An ambitious screening program for kidney and lifestyle diseases
Kidney diseases will not show any symptoms until both the kidneys are almost completely damaged. Once this happens, there is no treatment available to bring the kidneys back to normal. The patient has to undergo dialysis for life, which will drastically affect his physical, mental and financial health. The only other alternative is to undergo kidney transplantation. But, in addition to the difficulties in getting a suitable donor, and the huge expenditure for the operation, the patient has to go on taking medicines costing around Rs. 10 to 12 thousand Rupees per month for his whole lifetime. This makes detection of kidney diseases in the early stages very important. The failure of kidneys can be delayed by years and can even be prevented by proper treatment and change in the lifestyle. It is estimated that for every patient undergoing dialysis, there are 5000 patients in the early stages of kidney diseases.
Kidney Federation of India has procured an ambulance which has been converted into a mobile lab fitted with two semi-automatic analyzers, one centrifuge, incubator, urine analyzer, generator etc. For every person, we will be checking height and weight, blood pressure, urine for sugar and protein, and blood for sugar and creatinine. There will be 5 trained staff and 4 volunteers. There will be one doctor who will review the results. We can screen 300 people per day. This project was inaugurated on 18th August 2003 and is presently underway in Ernakulam district. We intend to introduce the program to all districts of Kerala in due course.
We hope that this screening program, if we are able to organize in all the districts of Kerala, it will go a long way in controlling the prevalence of kidney failure in the state of Kerala.