Every year about 2.2 lakh new patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) get added to the pool in the country resulting in an additional demand for 3.4 crore dialysis. With approximately 4,950 dialysis centres in the country, having around 20,000 machines, largely in the private sector, not even half of the demands are met with the existing infrastructure. Patients belonging to middle and lower-middle income group find themselves at the receiving end. ARCHANA JYOTI brings a report.
Hailing from lower-middle income group and employed with a private firm which does not provide health insurance policy, 45-year-old Ramesh Kumar, afflicted with kidney ailments neither has enough money to shell out for the dialysis in private hospitals nor a BPL card which can help him avail free health care facilities in the government sector.
To make matters worse, there are not enough government centres offering dialysis facilities in the national capital--there are just seven.
“Sometimes there are no beds, while treatment at private centres is expensive — as high as `2000 per sitting,” said his 19-year-old daughter, Anuksha.
In addition to this, at the government hospitals such as Safdarjung, RML and LNJP which offer the facilities, the dialysis machineries are not enough to cater to all the patients who turn up from across the districts for free treatment.
There is a need to increase the number of units, say doctors at these hospitals.
Kumar was diagnosed with renal disease a few months ago and has been recommended dialysis almost twice a week. The family has already exhausted the Mediclaim option and now incurring on treatment and transport through their own pocket or help coming in tit-bits from the well-wishers and friends.
According to various reports, there are more than a million patients in India who require dialysis and every year approximately 3,00,000 new patients are added to this list. The total dialysis requirement in the country is of 209 million treatments.
India has 4950 dialysis centers with approximately 20,000 machines that too mostly in metro or Tier-1cities which caters to only about 8 per cent of the demand.
Unfortunately, the effects of Covid-19 on kidney health may only grow, thus pushing up the number of patients needing dialysis or kidney transplant.
Last month, giving a ray of hope to lakhs of kidney ailment patients, Union Minister of Health, Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya announced that the Central Government will soon launch the ‘One Nation, One Dialysis’ programme. To be launched under the central flagship Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme (PMNDP), the patients can avail dialysis facility from anywhere in the country.
But when it will happen, only time will tell.
In fact, in the 2016-2017 Budget, the Government had announced the launch of a National Dialysis Programme under a public-private partnership at the district hospitals. It has been moving at a snail’s pace.
The programme was launched keeping in view the fact that every year about 2.2 lakh new patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) get added to the country resulting in additional demand for 3.4 crore dialysis each year.
The Government too feels that the high cost of dialysis care leads to a financial catastrophe for practically all the families with such patients. “It has been felt that both in the terms of provision of important life-saving procedures and for reducing the impoverishment on account of out-of-pocket expenditure for patients, a dialysis program is required,” said a seniot official from the Union Health Ministry.
The PMNDP has been implemented in 35 States/UT, in 569 districts at 1045 centers.