P.A. Chacko
Theme: Kidney Health for All – Advancing Equitable Access to Care and Optimal Medication Practice.
The emphasis on the importance of ensuring that everyone, regardless of their background or socio-economic status, has access to quality kidney care.
Kidneys play a vital role in maintaining our health.
They filter waste products and excess fluids from the blood. They regulate blood pressure, and produce hormones that regulate red blood cell production. They promote bone health too.
kidney disease can turn out to be a silent killer. It is found to be the 8th leading cause of death worldwide. Symptoms may appear only in the advanced stages.
Kidney diseases are reported to impact over 850 million individuals (10% of the general population) globally. They contributed to more than 3.1 million deaths in 2019 alone.
Health experts offer some tips to help our kidneys healthy as travelling companions:
Drinking plenty of water helps dehydration and keeps kidney damage away.
A balanced diet with plenty of fruits and leafy vegetables.
Stress management through relaxing exercises.
Regular monitoring of blood pressure and blood sugar levels.
Say bye to smoking.
Alcohol consumption can damage your kidneys.
Resort to painkillers with caution and under medical direction.
Resort to regular check-ups.
Caution:
Beware of kidney rackets. It is reported that kidney traffickers are rampant. They influence doctors and hospitals. They tempt poor people by dangling economic benefit.
Even some prestigious private hospitals are reported to do ‘undercover operations’ of kidney transplants.
There have been reports of people coming out of hospitals after treatment with one kidney less without their knowledge or permission.
The Telegraph UK reported that “One of the world’s biggest private hospital groups is embroiled in a ‘cash for kidneys’ racket in which impoverished people from Myanmar are being enticed to sell their organs for profit…Paying for organs is illegal in India, as it is across most of the world, but desperate young villagers from Myanmar are being flown to Apollo’s prestigious Delhi hospital and paid to donate their kidneys to rich Burmese patients.”
Apollo denied such allegations as unfounded.
The Hindustan Times reported that Dr. Amit Kumar allegedly masterminded the kidney racket that was being run in Dehradun. “He did everything possible to evade arrest – used aliases, continually changed places of work across states and burnt all incriminating documents – but law finally got the better of Dr. Amit Kumar.
In this multi-billion rupee kidney scandal of 2008, “Kidneys from most of the victims, who were the poor hailing from the nearby western Uttar Pradesh, were transplanted into clients from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Greece.” Amit Kumar, was arrested in Nepal on 7 February 2008.
