The Dialysis Services Foundation, a non-profit charitable organization aimed at providing for the medical expenses of patients with kidney failures has been launched.

The launch of the Dialysis Services Foundation took place at the Holiday INN hotel, Accra on Thursday 20th September 2018.

Explaining the reason behind the Foundation, Mr. Dela Agbo, a board member of the Foundation explained that the vision of the Foundation is to ensure that no life is lost in the country as a result of a person’s inability to pay for the treatment of kidney related problems.

“Our vision is to ensure that nobody with Kidney problems dies because there is no money for treatment” he said.

According to Mr. Agbo, the treatment of Dialysis is very expensive, hence the need for an initiative to mitigate the cost of treating kidney problems.

In his presentation, he revealed that checks by the Foundation showed that there were only 22 Dialysis treatment centres in the country. He says a further breakdown revealed that there is only one of such centres in the Volta Region.

Mr. Agbo thus appealed to the public to support the Dialysis Services Foundation to help raise an amount of Ghc2.5 million to provide the basic treatment required to help some kidney disease patients survive.

He also explained that the Foundation aims to cater for the needy kidney disease patients as well as support research that will help prevent, treat and cure kidney related diseases.

Kidney disease cases on the rise

President of Ghana Association of Doctors In Residency, Dr. Solomon Nii Kotey Kotey, also speaking at the launch of the Foundation said there was a spike in the number of kidney cases reported in hospitals towards the end of last year.

“For a while, every third or fourth patient we saw had a kidney disease.  Now the question was why were we seeing so much kidney disease cases. Most of them were being diagnosed as at time. Maybe we have become a little better at diagnosing them or maybe too a lot more coming up in the population. The number of people actually developing kidney disease could be increasing. We went back to look at the statistics to count our misses, we realized that when we looked at the proportional patients that it formed, there was a significant number, but nobody had the funds to do it on a national scale. That is why I am happy that this is happening”.

He further explained that one of the reasons why kidney disease treatment is expensive is because there are not enough centres to treat the condition.

“One of the reasons why dialysis is expensive is because there are not enough centres. If you count, even in Accra you don’t have so many centres and it follows the laws of economics. You have few centres and you have high demand and prices will go up, but when you have a lot of centres, then prices will drop”.

Dr. Solomon Nii Kotey Kotey, who is also an emergency physician, commended the organizers of the Foundation for the initiative to financially help patients with kidney disease.

Prosper Bani heads foundation

Former Chief of Staff and Minister of Interior in the erstwhile NDC government is the board chairman of the Dialysis Services Foundation.

Esquire Cornelius Avudzivi will be acting as the secretary of the foundation, with Francis Ato Cudjoe, Clement Tanoh and Dela Agbo as members of the board.

Medical practitioners, Drs. Luis Agyemang Serebour, Solomon Nii Kotey Kotey and Dr. Joshua Quaye form the medical advisory group.