As part of its activities to commemorate the World Kidney Day held on Thursday, Nephrologists at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, organized an awareness walk to sensitize the hospital community on the need to take proper care of the vital organ.
The team were also at the Eko Boys High School to engage the students on awareness talks and as well carried out health screening exercises.
Consultant Nephrologist with the hospital, Dr. Babawale Bello, said the day was set aside to raise awareness about the kidneys, diseases that affect them and how to prevent these diseases.
“This year is the third in the series of themes under the umbrella ‘Kidney Health for All’.
“This year, we are focusing on equitable access to care and medications for all people who have kidney disease using the slogan ‘equitable access to care and optimal medication practice.’
“The day was jointly organized by the International Society of Nephrology and International Federation of Kidney Foundations in 2006 to initiate the very first celebration and it has been held annually since that time. So we are now in the nineteenth year of celebrating the day,” he said.
He explained that all those involved in kidney disease care globally participated in marking the day, noting that activities including lectures public screening and awareness campaigns were carried out to mark the day, while also adding that LUTH participated in the celebration.
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Emphasizing on the importance of the day, Dr. Bello said the purpose of World Kidney Day was to raise awareness about the burden of the disease globally, which according to him has become a really big source of concern across the world.
“It is estimated that about one in every ten people will have some evidence of kidney disease if we check.
“Having said that, it is more common in certain populations, such as people of Sub Saharan African descent who tend to be a lot more affected by kidney disease than the rest of the world.
“In the same vein, the disease tends to cause no symptoms early in the course such that if you don’t go for screening, then you may not know until the disease is very advanced.
“That’s our experience in this part of the world where patients come very late in the course of the illness where we can’t do much other than to prepare them for transplantation at dialysis,” he said.
“This event allows us to screen and communicate to our people to go for screening health checks.
“The message is simply to be aware that kidneys are very important organs and have roles to play in excretion of wastes, control of blood pressure, making of blood, and turnover of bone.
“That diseases of the kidney are quite common and up to about one in every ten adults have some traces of the disease if they check enough,” he added.
Dr. Bello urged people to embrace routine medical check-up to avoid a situation of being infected with the disease ignorantly.
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