LAHORE: As the World Kidney Day is being observed globally on Thursday (today), a new study has projected some alarming figures, stating there are 22 million people in Pakistan with renal problems and out of these, some 22,000 develop End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) every year.
Quoting the figures in the report, senior nephrologists under the banner of the Pakistan Society of Nephrology (PSN) have expressed serious concerns regarding the manifold increase in the burden of kidney diseases every year in the country, regretting the authorities were largely ignoring the critical issue.
They say the PSN has been pointing out the issue, particularly, during the events held on the World Kidney Day, observed globally to raise awareness about renal diseases.
Talking to Dawn, Shaikh Zayed Hospital Lahore nephrology department head Prof Dr Waqar Ahmad said an International Diabetes Federation (IDF) had once reported that Pakistan was not among top ten countries in 2013 despite having a considerably large number of diabetic patients.
The IDF is an umbrella organisation of over 230 diabetes associations in 170 countries and territories.
‘Though IDF apprehended that Pakistan might join the top ten countries club [with highest number of patients] during 2025-2030, but the rise [in the number of cases] was so fast that the country reached 4th position among the top ten countries with more than 19.4 million diabetic patients as early as 2019,” Prof Waqar said, quoting the study.
He declares the diabetes as one of the leading causes of kidney diseases and failure, saying it is most common cause of ESRD (33pc) in Pakistan.
At present, he says, Pakistan reports 7-8pc increase in the number of diabetic patients every year and it is being feared that the ratio may rise to 11-12pc in 2030.
“As diabetes is a major cause of ESRD, we may expect a rapid parallel rise in the ESRD population in the country,” warned Prof Waqar, who is also a former president of the PSN.
The same is true for the second common cause of ESRD in Pakistan --- hypertension, he says.
“According to the study, the 26pc of our adult population has high blood pressure and more alarming fact is that 58pc of these patients either don’t know about their blood pressure or treat it inadequately, ” he says.
He says that for a developing country like Pakistan, the situation is even more complicated as it lacks local data on kidney diseases.
Keeping in view the prevalence of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in the country, Pakistan Renal Data System (PKRDS) was established in 2018 to keep proper record of ESRD patients throughout the country.
Prof Waqar says the project was headed by Prof Jaffar Ali Naqvi, a senior nephrologist, mainly to collect, analyze and report data of private as well as public kidney centres set up across the country. This remains the only clinical database of kidney patients in Pakistan, he says.
After collecting the data, the PKRDS publishes its quarterly reports for Hemodialysis patients in official journal of the PSN -- Pakistan Journal of Kidney Diseases (PJKD).
Prof Waqar laments that despite the tremendous success of the project, a number of kidney centres in the country are reluctant to share the statistics with the PKRDS.
He stresses that it is the government’s responsibility to make it compulsory for all the public and private sector dialysis centres to share their data with the PKRDS, as being done in advanced countries.
“Given these facts, nephrology fraternity hopes the government will pay attention to the grave situation of healthcare facilities in Pakistan as indicated by high incidence of diabetes, blood pressure and their poor control, leading to increase in burden of kidney diseases among local population,” he says.The purpose of the World Kidney Day, being observed on the second Thursday of March since 2006, is to highlight the importance of kidneys and to reduce the frequency of diseases affecting the vital organ worldwide.
For this year, the slogan for the day is ‘Bridge the knowledge gap to better kidney care’, which stresses the need for creating awareness about kidney diseases as many of these ailments are preventable. Kidney diseases are known to be a silent killer as these are mostly without any symptoms till reaching end stage.
“Once kidney disease reaches the end stage, there is no going back. Afterwards, we can suggest patients renal replacement therapy,” he says, adding the options include hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and transplant.
He says taking kidney diseases seriously and providing the patients best treatment options particularly becomes important in Pakistan where there are only 250 qualified nephrologists for 220 million population.
Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2022