CLARA Mugabe, a 46-year-old pensioner, has just finished her five-hour session on the dialysis machine at one of the haemodialysis centres in Harare.
BY VICTORIA MTOMBA
“This has been my life since 2009,” Mugabe, who is one of the over 400 people diagnosed of kidney failure in the country, said. Mugabe was diagnosed of the condition in 2009 after she spent several years battling with hypertension and experiencing swelling in her body.
“I was working at a financial institution between 1990 and 2009 and for all those years I never had any challenges with my health. After I had my second baby, my hypertension was always high and my body was always swollen,” she said.
The mother of two said when she visited her doctor in 2009, the hypertension was very high and she was referred to Avenues Clinic, where she was admitted and had blood tests carried out. The results showed her left kidney had been affected by the strain from hypertension.
“I visited the haemodialysis centre and during that period, I could not do anything. I was always tired and could not do my job effectively. When I visited the centre, I just thought it was for some few days not knowing that I would be on dialysis is for the rest of my life,” Mugabe said.
Her deteriorating health affected her so much that she could not play her role as a wife and a mother effectively. She said she then opted to go on retrenchment, but much of the package she got was exhausted through payment of medical bills. “The medical aid covered me for one year, 2010-2011. I visit the dialysis centre twice a week to clean the toxins out of my body,” she said.
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Dialysis sessions cost between $200 and $250 per session at private hospitals in Zimbabwe.
“Being a kidney patient is not easy,” she said. “During the early days I used to have a catheter close to my neck and in some instances I would bleed throughout the night and would be rushed to the hospital.”
A catheter is a tubular medical device that is inserted into canals, vessels, passageways, or body cavities usually to permit injection or withdrawal of fluids or to keep a passage open.
“When I had a fistula, it was worse as I was operated on and had an open wound for some time as the doctors were waiting for the hypertension to come to low levels,” she said.
Mugabe said because of the kidney challenges, she is struggling financially. She has a plot in Nyabira where she wants to have a poultry project, but is failing to raise sufficient funds for the business.
“At the moment I am grounded, although the dialysis has helped me I am now stronger, but I don’t have funds to start my project,” she said.
Kidney Association’s Diana Zhira said there are close to 400 people who are living with kidney disease in the country, but statistics are still being collected and the number of those affected is on the increase.
The association, launched in March, is a non-profit organisation that focuses on kidney health outcomes and how to improve quality of life for patients.
Zhira said people who need kidney transplant go to South Africa and India and the cost is between $16 000 and $24 000 excluding transport and accommodation costs. Zimbabwe is yet to provide such treatment.
Kidney disease can be caused by hypertension, longstanding diabetes mellitus, glomerular nephritis, ascending urinary tract infections and HIV.
Zhira said when one is confirmed to have kidney damage through investigations by a physician, dialysis treatment is prescribed. Usually a cardiovascular surgeon establishes a haemodialysis catheter insertion or arterial venous fistula and the patient undergoes counselling and starts dialysis.
“In our opinion, we strongly believe kidney disease or failure causes untold suffering and death if not attended to. Just like any chronic illness, government ought to be thinking of including it in any health levies that it considers or introduces in future,” she said.
Kidney patients face challenges that include lack of awareness, lack of resources, expensive treatment and lack of appreciation and knowledge on kidney donation.
Health and Child Care ministry permanent secretary, Gerald Gwinji said causes of renal failure range from infection complicated malaria, to lifestyle conditions like diabetes.
“But by far, the most common associations are with high blood pressure and this relates to today’s lifestyle of too much salt, fat and lack of exercise. Our budget does not come strictly into all the individual disease components except for a few, like malaria,” he said.
“TB and HIV are dealt with in the context of a health system, but from time to time focus investments are made to facilitate response to specific diseases or conditions or resultant complications such as end-stage renal disease.”
He said over the last three years, government has made additional focused investments of around $2,5 million to procure and install dialysis equipment in central and provincial hospitals and make dialysis more accessible and affordable for many, at much lower than the $200 made reference to.
“However, a complete renal care programme should include a transplant programme and we have not achieved this yet. Also, the total investment goes well beyond this as managing or preventing diseases such as BP, malaria and others prevents renal disease and this is not measured as direct investment in renal care,” he said.
The Kidney Association said they are creating a database for all kidney patients, plan to raise awareness of the disease countrywide and ensure that Zimbabweans embrace kidney-donation culture through education of families and communities at large.
