It is alarming to find that nearly 80% of kidney patients in Bangladesh die due to a lack of treatment, and should serve as a stark reminder of the gaps that persist in our healthcare system.
According to experts, thousands of patients develop kidney failure each year, yet only a small fraction can access dialysis or transplant services, largely due to high costs and limited facilities.
Efforts to raise public awareness about kidney disease are, therefore, certainly welcome, such as the mobile awareness vehicle arranged recently at Bangladesh Medical University (BMU), where kidney specialists emphasized that early detection can prevent severe complications.
Regular screenings and simple tests such as urine analysis and creatinine checks can detect problems early, often before symptoms appear.
However, awareness alone cannot solve the crisis.
A citizen who becomes aware of a health problem must also have somewhere to turn for treatment. Unfortunately, that is where the system frequently falls short.
Dialysis and transplant procedures remain prohibitively expensive for most families, and the number of available treatment facilities remains far below what the country requires. The result is that many patients, even after diagnosis, are left with few realistic options for survival.
Healthcare cannot be framed solely as an individual responsibility. Encouraging people to adopt healthier lifestyles and seek early diagnosis is important, but the state must ensure that adequate and affordable care exists for them.
Bangladesh has made progress in various sectors over the past decades, yet healthcare infrastructure still struggles to keep pace with the needs of a growing population. Expanding dialysis facilities, subsidizing treatment, training more specialists, and strengthening public hospitals should all be priorities.
It is imperative that the country take its responsibility toward public health seriously. Unless both citizens and institutions work together, statistics like these will continue to define the reality of healthcare in Bangladesh.
