Vijayawada: Expert welcomes Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme

Vijayawada: About 10 percent of India's population is said to be suffering from some form of chronic kidney disorder (CKD), of which 2,20,000 new cases of kidney failure (stage V CKD) are reported in India each year, severe enough to need dialysis.

Chronic kidney disease is a severe public health problem so much so that kidney failure is projected to be the fifth leading cause of death worldwide by 2040, said Dr. Varun Kumar Bandi, Department of Nephrology, Dr.PinnamaneniSiddharatha Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Foundation, Vijayawada.

Dr Varun Kumar in a press release said that there is need to educate people about the kidney problems and to help them to live healthily. To mark the World Kidney Day on March 11, he explained the need made some suggestions to the people and highlighted the problems of kidney patients.

One of the major hurdles for such patients is the lack of access to dialysis, which has long been a reality owing to critical shortages of dialysis equipment and staff especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has made the entire process even more challenging for them.

However, the Indian government's decision to include Peritoneal Dialysis (PD), an advanced and convenient technology for home-based dialysis treatment under the Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme (PMNDP) in 2016 has been helping kidney failure patients to have affordable and easy access to this home-based treatment option. With the inclusion of PD in PMNDP, the government has brought down the overall cost of treatment by efficiently leveraging the resources, which in turn will help all the kidney failure patients to have easy access to the services.

Dr Varun Kumar said many kidney patients in India withdraw from dialysis and succumb to death due to financial crunch and around 60 million dialysis patients are pushed under the poverty line due to exorbitant medical bills. Considering this, the decision taken by the government in 2019 of including Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) in National Health Policy under Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme (PMNDP) was laudable.

The policy has only been incorporated by four Indian states. There's a need to increase the PD outreach in India, which can be achieved with widespread acceptance of the PD program. It is critical to acknowledge that any policy decision is only as good as an idea on paper, if it lacks implementation.