Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The coun­try needs more peo­ple to come for­ward to do­nate kid­neys. This was the mes­sage from stake­hold­ers at Guardian Me­dia’s World Kid­ney Day com­mem­o­ra­tion yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny, T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Dr Has­si­na Mo­hammed, not­ed that kid­ney trans­plants are one of the best ways to help peo­ple with re­nal dis­eases.

“It is one of the most ef­fec­tive ways of cur­ing kid­ney dis­ease. It helps im­prove the life qual­i­ty of pa­tients who have kid­ney dis­ease,” she said.

“So please be­come a donor. Reg­is­ter. Go on­line. There is lots of in­for­ma­tion in­volved in it.”

She al­so en­cour­aged peo­ple to live health­i­er lifestyles which, in turn, will pre­vent them from con­tract­ing kid­ney dis­ease.

“Stop smok­ing, ex­er­cise, di­et and those things are go­ing to help you. Drink lots of wa­ter as well,” she said.

Min­is­ter of Health Dr Ter­rence Deyals­ingh was al­so present at the event. He said the min­istry is work­ing on ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple about com­bat­ing non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and al­so de­bunk­ing myths sur­round­ing live do­na­tions.

“We en­cour­age peo­ple to be­come liv­ing donors,” he said.

“One of the things that donors have to un­der­stand is that as a donor, when you do­nate a kid­ney, you can live a nor­mal, nor­mal life on one kid­ney. A lot of donors be­lieve that if I do­nate a kid­ney my qual­i­ty of life is ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed...so that kind of ed­u­ca­tion, I hope, can lead to more live donors.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Kid­ney Re­cip­i­ents’ Sup­port Group of T&T, Can­dice Ed­wards, said peo­ple can vis­it the Na­tion­al Or­gan Trans­plant Unit for more in­for­ma­tion on how to do this. She al­so said peo­ple can reg­is­ter to do­nate their kid­neys af­ter they are de­ceased.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Kid­ney Day web­site, chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease (CKD) is com­mon, with one out of 10 adults world­wide hav­ing it. If left un­treat­ed, it can be dead­ly.

“While ear­ly de­tec­tion al­lows for dis­ease care and man­age­ment to help pre­vent mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty, and im­prove cost-ef­fec­tive­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, kid­ney dis­ease-re­lat­ed mor­tal­i­ty con­tin­ues to in­crease year­ly and is pro­ject­ed to be the 5th lead­ing cause of death by 2040,” it said.

It not­ed there is a “per­sis­tent and on­go­ing CKD knowl­edge gap” which is why this year’s theme fo­cus­es on ef­forts to in­crease ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness about kid­ney health.

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