‘Excessive substance abuse responsible for kidney failures in young people’

Excessive substance abuse among Nigeria’s youths has been named one of the leading causes of rising end stage renal diseases (ESRD), a situation experts have described as alarming.

The number of dialysis patients in Nigeria is put at 50, 000 with 15, 000 patients developing kidney diseases annually.

Tayo Lawal, medical director Gbagada General Hospital, Lagos said in an interview with BusinessDay that the major cause of end stage chronic kidney failure is the growing prevalence of diabetes and hypertension which are related to lifestyle changes.

“The rising incidence of kidney failure among youths is because of excessive drug abuse and it is becoming worrisome in the society. When the kidney fails automatically, the end point will be to have kidney transplant and that come out to N13 million as at now in the country, so it is not an easy task” Lawal said.

Lawal advised youths to avoid the habits of abusing drugs, because the consequence is kidney failure. However, there is a lot that the government can do.

“In terms of social advocacy, lifestyle modification, getting regular checkup, taking care of diets and mostly not abusing drugs unnecessarily” Lawal added.

According to industry subject matter experts, people with ESRD are required to undergo three dialysis sessions a week (each lasting between three and four hours).

About 36 dialysis sessions (three months) are expected to establish an individual has end stage renal disease and the six dialysis sessions presently covered by the health insurance scheme will be insufficient to establish that.

BusinessDay investigations show that the distribution of renal units in Nigeria is abysmally low to the rising prevalence of kidney failure; experts say the exponential growth and upsurge of chronic renal failure in patients’ calls for more renal services, nephrologists and sophisticated dialysis machines and medicaments.

The nephrologist however said one out of every four Nigerian has hypertension, while more than 50 per cent of them are not aware they do and so it continues to damage the organs of the body, including kidney, heart and eyes.

Adaeze Asinobi, vice president, Nigerian Association of Nephrologists, said that diabetes had displaced chronic glomerulonephritis as the second major cause of chronic kidney disease in the country.

“Chronic kidney disease is a major public health burden. People need to know that this is a major problem given that one to two out of every 10 Nigerian has the disorder and we should know and do everything to prevent it” Asinobi said.

“The number of sufferers, mostly middle-aged Nigerians, is alarming for a country which depends on its productive young and middle-aged for development,” she added