Healthy lifestyle can prevent 60pc kidney diseases

Approximately 60 percent of kidney disease can be prevented through a healthy lifestyle, like having balanced diet and doing sufficient physical exercise, doctors told a roundtable yesterday.

Excessive body weight is one of the major factors that stimulates diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease which are responsible for affecting kidney functions, they added.

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If weight can be controlled, kidney diseases will be prevented, they said at the roundtable organised by Kidney Awareness Monitoring and Prevention Society (KAMPS) in the capital's Jatiya Press Club, marking World Kidney Day to be observed on March 9, 2017.

Quoting a recent study, KAMPS President Prof MA Samad said about two crore people in the country suffer from different types of kidney disease, but only 10 percent of them get opportunity to take necessary treatments due to high cost.

“So prevention is the best solution,” said Samad, also head of the kidney diseases department at Labaid Specialized Hospital.

Prof Dr Harun-or-Rashid, chairman of Kidney Foundation Bangladesh, said the people, who are at risk of kidney disease, have to do some check-ups regularly as the disease cannot be assumed at the beginning.

People also have to drink sufficient water and quit smoking, and should be aware about the disease, he added.

Addressing the programme, Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association Chief Executive Syeda Rizwana Hasan urged the government to reduce the treatment cost.

Dr Mohibur Rahman, secretary general of Bangladesh Renal Association; Dr Abdul Halim, principal of Kumudini Women's Medical College and Hospital; Shahin Reza Noor, secretary general of KAMPS; and Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, former cricket player, also spoke.