CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE: AN OVERLOOKED, POSSIBLY FATAL CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
There might be an epidemic of post-coronavirus kidney disease coming. Upcoming World Kidney Day is a call is for health workers, relatives and friends, private sector and even government to see what more we can do to improve the situation of people livin
The coronavirus outbreak has placed an additional emotional and safety burden on people with underlying health conditions, like chronic kidney disease, according to Nephrologist and Founder of Renal Care Institute (RCI), Dr Gagoitsewe Saleshando.
His comments come as the country will join the rest of the world in observing World Kidney Day on Thursday themed, ‘living well with kidney disease.’
“It seeks to highlight the plight of people living with kidney disease, particularly in this era of Covid 19. They have gone through a tough year so far with Covid 19,”he said.
According to Dr Saleshando, many are unable to self-isolate as they have to come for treatments in hospitals frequently. “They live with anxiety, and have lost some of their fellow patients and relatives who have been the backbone of their support structure. Hence the call is for us as health workers, relatives and friends, private sector and even government to see what more we can do to improve their situation.”
The goal, he added, is for patients to not only feel supported during this difficult time, but to also be empowered through education to achieve the health outcomes and life goals that are meaningful and important to them.
Chronic Kidney Disease is one of the Non-Communicable-Diseases (NCD) that is a big problem in Botswana. Although not confirmed with own local research, it is expected that local prevalence of CKD stands at 10 per cent, meaning one in ten Batswana will have some level of kidney disease.
While he acknowledged that there is limited data on the long-term effects of COVID-19 on patients with Acute Kidney injury (AKI), given that Covid 19 is a relatively new disease, Dr Saleshando noted that there might be an epidemic of postcoronavirus kidney disease in years to come.
“Chronic kidney disease is already a major problem for the country and some of the scars caused by Covid -19 in the kidneys seem permanent, so there may be an increase of Chronic Kidney Disease in years to come,” he stated.
Exactly how the virus affects the kidneys which play a vital role in cleaning the body’s blood supply is still unclear, but experts have theories.
Dr Saleshando explains; “As the body’s waste processing center, the kidney has a lot of blood vessels and receives about 20% of blood from the heart. This makes it susceptible when the body is under attack. Kidney injury can be caused by direct viral attack, as the kidney has ACE 2 receptors that the Virus binds to, similar to the lungs. Other injury is caused by indirect means such as: lack of oxygen to the kidneys, caused by poor lung function, clotting is the small blood vessels that supply the kidneys and low blood pressure caused by infections.”