— patients will receive $600,000 per annum for treatment

THE hundreds of Guyanese currently suffering from end-stage renal disease or ‘kidney failure’ and needing the life-saving weekly dialysis treatment are breathing a sigh of relief with the government’s announcement of the Dialysis Support Programme, which will give each patient up to $600,000 per annum.

A long-time advocate of government support for dialysis patients, Faye Abigail Yong, is praising the government for hearing the cries of the people and coming to their assistance in Budget 2022.

“Personally, I’m very appreciative and grateful. Dialysis is a life-saving treatment and we cannot be on it without money, so without money we die. The government and President [Dr Irfaan] Ali are giving us a great assist from the burden of our everyday existence,” Yong expressed.

“I’m happy that the government has listened to the plight of the dialysis patients. I’ve been lobbying for two years for relief from the burden of this astronomical treatment cost,” she said.
For persons suffering from kidney failure, dialysis works as an artificial kidney.

In human beings the kidney plays a critical function of filtering out extremely toxic fluid, electrolytes and wastes produced by the body that can build up in the body and will lead to death if not removed; as such, losing kidney function is considered a dire medical condition.

Many patients suffering from kidney failure need between two to three dialysis sessions per week; however with dialysis costing between$12,000 to $15,000 per session, the cost to patients ranges between $1.248 million to $2.34 million per year.

Yong, 46, has been on dialysis for the past five years. She currently does her treatment at the BioMed Energy and Dialysis Inc located at the Woodlands Hospital, where it costs $15, 000 per session.

BioMed treats some 66 patients monthly. For BioMed, the new government initiative means more of their patients can now be able to do more for their health.

“Some patients can only afford one treatment a week, when it’s recommended they do three treatments per week. Some patients travel long distances too, that is another financial burden on them, medication is also a financial problem patients have to buy when not available at the public hospital,” BioMed Chief Executive Officer Olive Sinclair, shared of some of the challenges facing many of the facility’s patients.

SIGNIFICANT HELP
Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) Head of the Multi-Organ Trans-plant and Vascular Access Surgery Department, Dr Kishore Persaud, is also happy to see the new measure come on stream, because of what it means for the lives of hundreds of suffering Guyanese.

“This will be a significant reduction in the economic burden they face, as it will help to keep them healthier until they can achieve a transplant,” Dr Persaud commented.

It has been a week with much major positive development for Guyanese with kidney failure, as the announcement of the Dialysis Support Programme came just a few days after the Human Organ and Tissue Transplant Bill 2021 was passed in the National Assembly.

Implementation of the new legislation will mean that persons in need of organ donations would no longer be at the mercy of just relatives and friends, who may or may not be matched, as they would also stand the chance of being saved by organs extracted from a ‘brain-dead’ patient.

The law is expected to result in many lives being saved, especially considering the growing number of persons in Guyana awaiting organ transplants; more prominently, patients suffering from kidney failure who rely largely on dialysis as a life-saving mechanism.

Dialysis patients would not need the treatment anymore if they are given a new kidney via a transplant. This is the case for 57-year-old Wanda Dillon, who finally underwent her transplant last month at GPHC, after being a dialysis patient for the past three-and-a-half-years.

Though she is glad to receive her transplant and no longer be in need of the costly dialysis, she is happy knowing that her colleagues who are still taking treatment will now be better off.

“It’s a great help, I must say, because dialysis is so expensive to upkeep, sometimes you sell everything, all of your property. I know people who sell their house, car, everything, but then the money runs out and they still die. It’s a great improvement,” she said.