Medical experts from around the world have stressed on the issue to avoid preventable deaths caused by acute kidney injury (AKI), by coming up with lifesaving treatments by 2025.
The scientists said that such deaths caused by acute kidney injury, which affects around 13 million people every year and contributes to 1.7 million deaths annually, could be treated for as little as 150 dollars per patient and eliminated in just 10 years.
According to Professor Giuseppe Remuzzi, President of the ISN, and one of the Commission authors, "The ability to provide lifesaving treatments for acute kidney injury provides a compelling argument to consider therapy for it as much as a basic right as it is to give antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV, especially as care needs only be given for a short period of time in most patients."
AKI, which causes an abrupt or rapid decline in kidney function, includes complications like chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease that need dialysis and transplantation, resulting in high long-term costs. NICE estimates the yearly cost of AKI to the NHS in England to be between 434 million pounds and 620 pounds million per year, which is higher than the costs associated with breast cancer, or lung and skin cancer combined.
Commission co-author Professor Ravindra Mehta added that they were confident that many of the preventive and therapeutic interventions against AKI can use existing infrastructure, advances in technology, and human resources across different regions. However, 2025 would only be feasible if diagnostics and dialysis equipment and supplies were made available at low cost and national health authorities could be encouraged to invest in sustainable infrastructure to address kidney disease.
The paper is published in the Lancet.