The number of people requiring dialysis is increasing day by day. This needs to be reversed, said Health Secretary Gagandeep Singh Bedi at the Kidney Health for All event organised in Chennai on Sunday.

Inaugurating the Continuing Medical Education (CME) event, Mr. Bedi said, “Tamil Nadu is the first State to have an 8-km stretch in every district for walking. Walking 8 kms is close to 10,000 steps, which is followed in Japan.”

The CME was organised in public interest by NephroPlus, Tanker Foundation and Mohan Foundation, with the Kidney Warriors Foundation developing the concept.

Listing out the measures a person needs to follow to prevent chronic kidney disease (CKD), he said, “Healthy lifestyle such as a good diet and exercise is the first important step. Second would be early detection of the disease. Periodic testing of diabetes and blood pressure would be helpful in the early detection of kidney diseases.”

The event was organised to discuss and raise awareness of the emerging growth of CKD due to unknown reasons in agricultural and other low economic resource areas, which is putting a strain on the country’s healthcare system.

Stressing the need to check creatinine levels to detect CKD, Dr. Georgi Abraham said, “In Japan, there is a device akin to the sugar device. It would reveal the creatinine levels with just one prick. This sort of device would help the people a lot.”

The doctors agreed that there was a need to get the medicine to the people. There needs to be a catchment area. In Singapore, every person is required to join the army and hence, they undergo a medical checkup. This makes sure they are in the system that will help in checking their levels, said nephrologist D. Arvind Canchi.

Nephrologist Dr. N. Gopalakrishnan referred to a recent study in which it was found that 52% of the CKD patients in Tamil Nadu were caused by other reasons unrelated to lifestyle diseases. “The three causes associated with this are: heat stress, environment pollution and exposure to chemicals.”

Dr. Jayam Kannan threw light on kidney disease that could be brought on due to pregnancy. “Most of the times, pregnant women do not visit the doctor as their families or support system would say it is common and not serious. But they should visit the doctor, and their blood pressure must be checked every time they pay a visit, starting from the first month of pregnancy.”

Dr. Edwin Fernando, Dr. Sunil Shroff, Dr. Muruganathan, Dr. P B Sivaraman and Dr. Vasanth Ravi also spoke at the event