Helen Joseph Hospital commemorates World Kidney Day
AUCKLAND PARK - Community and professionals get kidney care education.
In commemorating World Kidney Day Helen Joseph Hospital hosted an awareness day to educate the community about the illness as well as services provided by the hospital’s Renal Unit on 13 March.
Under the theme ‘chronic kidney disease and aging’, the event focused on educating medical professionals about their key role in detecting and reducing the risk of chronic kidney disease.
Talks from medical professionals, patients with kidney failure and kidney donors encouraged people to lead a healthy lifestyle and to control blood pressure and diabetes as they can lead to kidney failure. Hospital staff and members of the community also embarked on a healthy lifestyle walk raising awareness as well as the risk factors for kidney disease.
“Today we encourage people to know their health status by doing regular medical check-ups so illnesses can be detected early and treated immediately,” said the hospital’s CEO, Dr Raymond Billa.
He also encouraged people to get information about organ donation so they can understand that it is a lifesaving initiative that can begin to help those in medical need.
Currently, the hospital has 89 patients on the dialysis programme and so far, have performed two kidney transplants this year.
In February 2014, the renal unit performed 597 dialysis sessions and the 30 patients on peritoneal dialysis, meaning they undergo dialysis at home and come to the hospital for tests – presented at Helen Joseph 36 times.
