Doctor urges for preventive measures

Advising communities on preventative measures to avoid developing chronic kidney disease is important, a doctor says.
PNG Kidney Foundation physician in-charge of haemodialysis Dr Steven Bogosia said at the World Kidney Day commemoration that early detection and prevention was better because PNG did not have proper facilities to help patients.
“It’s been a problem I have noticed in the last couple of years. We lose many of our patients that come in with kidney disease, we don’t have proper facilities,” he said.
“Many people come to hospital when they are already worse, I mean they develop full symptoms of kidney disease and they end up with failure.”
Bogosia said the theme for the event was Kidney Disease and Obesity because obesity was closely associated with the disease, hence people must be encouraged to eat organic food and cut down on processed food.
He said kidney plays important functions in the body.  It performs as a filtering mechanism by clearing all waste out of the body system, helps to manufacture blood and helps control the calcium level in the body.
“When you are unwell and you have a kidney problem, there are many causes.  Mind you, in the 80s and 70s, kidney problem was mostly due to things like infection going up from your bladder and ending up causing the infection. We had cases of kidney stone in some people, some secondary to infections as well,” he said
“But in the recent years from 90s and 2000 era we are seeing a big change in the cause factor.”