Speakers at a roundtable discussion on Saturday stressed forging comprehensive effort to prevent the alarming kidney disease through raising awareness among people, in a desperate bid to avert the fatal and harmful impact of the disease in the families, society and nation.

It is mentioned that more than 85 crore people globally affected by kidney disease. Every year about 1 crore and 30lakhs of people get affected by Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) of which 85 percent is in developing countries like Bangladesh. In Bangladesh about two crore people are suffering from various kidney related diseases and only 10 percent of them can afford the costly treatment.

Kidney Awareness Monitoring and Prevent Society (KAMPS), a voluntary and not for profit organisation organised the roundtable titled, ‘Kidney Health for All: Ensuring Equal Rights for Better Treatment” at the national press club in the capital.

Mentioning that health insurance could be launched in ensuring rights of health care facilities for the patients who are deprived of opportunities, renowned Doctor and private physician of Prime Minister, Prof. Dr. ABM Abdullah said although there have limitations here but its available in many countries worldwide.

Referring to a proposal and demand of KAMPS Chairman, Prof Dr. MA Samad to run an insurance scheme named “Sheikh Hasina Kidney Protection Insurance’,  Prof Abdullah said, it’s a good idea, as Prime Minister always think of betterment and wellbeing of common people or poor people, she may kindly consider it.

“Diabetes, High Blood Pressure both may cause kidney problem and all these are silent killers but these diseases could be prevented through raising awareness among people very effectively”, Prof. Abdullah added.

Prof. Dr. Md. Robed Amin, Line Director of Non-Communicable Disease Control (NCDC), DGHS, while addressing said that there have acute shortage of Kidney specialists in the country so scope of treatment for kidney diseases, dialysis etc. is too short and highly expensive.

“In the developed countries even in our neighboring countries there have community dialysis system; they have a huge number of dialysis units. There have no system to take license of a dialysis center separately in our country because it’s to take license along with a clinic or hospital, so I think policy needs to change in this regard, so that someone can take license separately for a dialysis center, and it will contribute to spread scope dialysis facilities everywhere in the country” Prof. Robed added.

KAMPS arranged the roundtable as part of its series of program marking the ‘World Kidney Day 2024’ to be observed on March 14 (Thursday).

“Currently, kidney disease is known to be pandemic in the world. It is a silent killer disease. Kidney disorder treatment is extremely expensive. Therefore, awareness should be given priority to prevent kidney diseases and to ensure life with healthy kidney,” speakers said.

Chairman of KAMPS and chief consultant of Kidney Department of Anwar Khan Modern Hospital Prof Dr MA Samad presented the keynote paper on the occasion.

Prof. Samad proposed that an insurance scheme could be run such as named ‘Sheikh Hasina Kidney Protection Insurance”, to bring the helpless poor kidney patients under treatment facilities.

In his keynote speech, Prof Dr MA Samad stressed that firstly it needs for formulating policy to widespread coverage of massive awareness raising program across the country mainly targeting to prevent the kidney disease and then ensuring equal rights for better treatment and ensuring access to the treatment facilities for all the kidney failure patients irrespective of rich and poor.

National Professor, Dr AK Azad Khan, Chairman of Kidney Foundation, Prof. Dr. Harun or Rashid, Chief Selector of Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), Ghazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, Prof. Dr. Anwar Hossain, President, Pediatric Nephrology Society of Bangladesh, Prof. Dr. Harisul Haque, Professor of BSMMU and General Secretary of KAMPS, Executive, Director of the KAMPS, Rezwan Salehin also spoke on the occasion among others.