Medical officials at the Bank Hospital in Accra have revealed the worrying phenomenon of kidney disease among young people in the country.<\/p>\n
According to them, the number of young people contracting the disease is on the rise.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the launch of an ultra-modern renal center at the facility, senior staffer at the Hospital, Dr Charlotte Osafo, cautioned the public to take preventative steps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main things that make people get kidney disease in Ghana \u2013 the first thing is hypertension. A lot of people have hypertension but they don\u2019t control the hypertension. So, it is important that if you are diagnosed, you also have to do certain things like reducing your salt intake, reducing your weight, regular exercise and eating healthily.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll those are important, not only for hypertensive patients but also for diabetics, because diabetes is also one of the causes of kidney failure. Infections are also one of the causes. If you go to the hospital and they say you\u2019ve got an infection of the kidney, and they give you medications, you have to take it,\u201d she urged.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the same event, the Presidential advisor on health, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, disclosed\u00a0government\u2019s plans to institute an insurance system\u00a0to cater for patients undergoing dialysis.<\/p>\n
He explained that the insurance system would also help ease the financial burden of persons with kidney diseases.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cost of treating one patient on renal dialysis for a year is about GH\u00a250,700 and I\u2019m sure most families cannot afford that amount for one patient alone; it\u2019s huge and it\u2019s out of the reach of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we also want to set up a renal fund or insurance system which will take care of renal cases,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He further revealed government\u2019s intention to pass a law to regulate the donation of kidneys to patients who may have to undergo kidney transplant.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut before we do that, we have to put a legislation in place to back kidney transplant so that people don\u2019t just catch people on the street and remove their kidneys to sell,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
story by Mamusi Numon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Medical officials at the Bank Hospital in Accra have revealed the worrying phenomenon of kidney disease among young people in the country. According to them, the number of young people contracting the disease is on the rise. Speaking at the launch of an ultra-modern renal center at the facility, senior staffer at the Hospital, Dr […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":19872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,1],"tags":[4553,7273,7358,6999,11403,12310,6738,9643,192,2264,12634,6825,5783,10342,11973,13228,11377,11325,10695,3954,594,5140,5784],"class_list":["post-19871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-fitness","category-news","tag-accra","tag-anthony","tag-bank","tag-diabetes","tag-disease","tag-exercise","tag-families","tag-fund","tag-ghana","tag-government","tag-health","tag-hospital","tag-kidney-diseases","tag-law","tag-one","tag-patients","tag-presidential","tag-street","tag-transplant","tag-will","tag-who","tag-young","tag-youth"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}