India needs 35,000 dialysis machines, it has only 1,000

It is a country where an estimated 20 lakh suffer kidney afflictions every year. Of which, 10% are put on dialysis or need to have their kidney transplanted. And, the numbers, according to nephrologists, are alarmingly doubling at the turn of each year. Forty percent of birth defects in children are kidney related.

It is a nation, whose healthcare centers put togther could be barely equipped with 1,000 dialysis machines, when at least 35,000 are required to tackle what can be described as a frightening scourge. In Kolkata alone, around 13,000 people are rushed to clinics and hospitals with rundown kidneys yearly and, of them, normally over a 1,000 are critical patients.

"Sadly, even those in dire need of a transplant wait in a queue. The government’s Organ Transplant Act of 1994 has banned doctors other than relatives of a patient from donating kidneys. Other than that, kidneys can be sourced from cadaver (brain dead) cases. In such a scenario, the demand for kidney replacements far outstrips availability of this life-saving organ", Dr. P Ravichandran, nephrologist and kidney surgeon, told ET.

"If the government enacted the Act, it should ensure that the country has enough dialysis machines to keep the patients alive till they get a kidney", he added. Dr. Ravichandran heads the Institute of Kidney Disease & Organ Transplant at the Madras Institute of Orthopaedic & Traumatology (MIOT).

The situation looks woeful when compared with western countries or southeast regions like Singapore or Malaysia. With treatment costs involvint dialysis and medicines ranging anywhere between Rs.20,000 and Rs.25,000 monthly here, most critical kidney patients are compelled to throw in the towel after 1-2 years.

"In Singapore, Malaysia or the West, even dialysis patients lead normal lives and survive 10 to 20 years. This is largely because of government funded schemes and insurance cover. Singapore is smaller than Chennai. Yet, it has 38 dialyais centers each armed with 32 machines," Dr. Ravichandran said. ‘Delinked centres’ could be one way of countering this predicament, according to him. A dialysis entails half the cost at a delinked center because it is not saddled with a hospital’s or clinic’s extraneous overheads.

(Ref: The Economic Times, Ahmedabad, June 4, 2001)