Burden of chronic kidney disease in India
From the last few years, there has been a continuous increase in the prevalence of Chronic Kidney Disease In India. With increasing life expectancy and generality of lifestyle diseases, Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) has become one of the most commonly occurring communicable diseases in India. Due to growing cases of CKD, patients undergoing dialysis are also increasing approx. by 10-15 percent every year. India is estimated to have about 120,000 patients on Hemodialysis and over 8500 patients on peritoneal dialysis. The approximate prevalence of CKD is 800 per million population.
India currently has 820+ nephrologists, 710+ hemodialysis units with 2,500+ dialysis stations and 4,800+ patients on CAPD. There are 172+ transplant centers, two-thirds of which are in South India and mostly privately run. The most common causes of CKD in population-based studies is diabetic nephropathy and rising air pollution. Despite it being a danger to public health, kidney disorders are still not a high priority condition in India.
India falls under the class of developing countries so many demographic factors such as over-population, minimum access to healthful diets to all the people, shortage of operational beds in hospitals and shortage of doctors and paramedics push up the risk of Chronic Kidney disease more. When it comes to developing prevention and management strategies, CKD is treated as any other chronic illness. Clearly, for any health manager, it is bracketed under one category of chronic diseases. Until recently, CKD had not been regarded as a significant problem by the Indian public health system.
Many non-communicable diseases such as aids, CVD, and injuries earned the main priority of proposals and services for public health. Therefore, there was no specific support from the Government of India's Ministry of Health for the prevention and management of CKD.
However, the Government has launched a system in which it plans to set up stand-alone units for hemodialysis. Such units are being negotiated with a view to creating an increase in services at an affordable cost in public-private partnerships.
In conclusion, CKD is an issue of epidemic proportions in India, and with the rising burden of diabetes, hypertension and the growing elderly population, it will escalate even more. In addition, the role of knowledge in early detection and, therefore, the proper management of CKDs and the choice of home healthcare solutions for high quality, cost-effective, convenient and comfortable disease management are immediate and easy to implement options to manage the burden of CKDs in India.
