Call for early help on kidney disease

[okarol]

Call for early help on kidney disease

Mark Metherell
May 27, 2008

THE federal Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, agreed to be photographed with a giant kidney, but drew the line at declaring kidney disease a national priority.

Chronic kidney disease, called the silent killer, is responsible for 40 deaths in Australia every day, prompting calls for the Federal Government to focus its much-promoted preventive health policy more on kidney disease.

However, after launching Kidney Health Week yesterday, Ms Roxon would not undertake to step up the campaign against kidney disease, which accounts for a third of all admissions to public hospitals but frequently goes undiagnosed until it reaches the life-threatening stage.

She said the preventive task force had been set its priorities: excessive alcohol use, tobacco and obesity, which she said "do have an impact in terms of chronic kidney disease".

The medical director of Kidney Health Australia, Tim Mathew, has appealed for more government attention to chronic kidney disease, the incidence of which is rising by 8 per cent a year.

There was "barely any focus on early detection of chronic kidney disease", Dr Mathew told the launch in Canberra yesterday.

Effective measures would need more than what Ms Roxon was proposing, he said. What was urgently needed were resources within the Department of Health and Ageing to "make the case for chronic kidney disease being promoted to a condition with priority".

A simple test costing only $9 could identify affected patients but because there were often no symptoms, doctors tended not to ask for the test, even for higher risk patients such as smokers, those with high blood pressure, heavy drinkers and those aged over 50.

Rules barring doctors from billing Medicare for screening tests when the patient showed no symptoms also acted as a barrier to early diagnosis.

Later through a spokesman, Ms Roxon elaborated on her position, saying that by devoting resources to tackling obesity "the Government is directly addressing the issue of kidney disease".

The Government was also engaged in several projects to help tackle kidney disease, including spending more than $220 million on new drugs for kidney disease and more than $12 million extra on more dialysis services, particularly for indigenous people who have far higher rates of kidney disease.

PHOTO: Nicola Roxon, left, with MP Melissa Parke and Billy the Kidney yesterday.

[stauffenberg]

This is more of the usual 'blame the patient' idiocy with respect to kidney disease.  Although obesity does increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, only those who also have inherited a genetic risk for obesity causing diabetes will go on to develop the disease, and of these  only about 30 - 40% will develop renal failure.  Of all causes of renal failure,  more than half cannot be prevented, so screening patients for early symptoms and blaming them for gaining weight won't help much.

[Zach]

Ranting as you do about another "blame the patient" goes nowhere.

If even 20% of renal failure can be prevented by life style changes and other methods, why not promote that fact?
 

[stauffenberg]

But just look at the way the article begins by saying the government is focusing on the priorities of "alcohol, tobacco, and obesity, which do have an impact on kidney disease.'  The average person reading that is going to get the impression that if we degenerate renal patients could only control our bad habits, we would not get sick in the future place.  So why sign a donor card or support better Medicare funding for dialysis for those irresponsible characters who have brought this all on themselves, etc.