Bangladesh has made significant advances in health sector, which makes it an example for other developing countries However, the issue of kidney health has been an alarming factor for Bangladeshi people for a long time. The country has only five centers where kidney transplants are being performed. This scenario is changing slowly and more and more medical institutions are now starting to perform this complicated procedure. Although this has been going on in Bangladesh since 1982, there hasn’t been significant development regarding
this area.
According to reports, there are over five thousand patients in Bangladesh who require kidney transplant each year but out of them only one hundred twenty patients manage to procure kidneys from their relatives. But, what happens to the other four thousand eight hundred and eighty anyone can tell.
This huge deficiency in the area has given rise to questions among specialists as to what can be done regarding the patients who can’t manage to find a matching kidney. Bangladesh does not have any study to estimate the actual prevalence of kidney disease and the need for organ grafting.
To tone down this demand Bangladeshi health care sector made a historical step and began transplanting kidneys from brain-dead patients through consent of their family members early this year. This initiative will surely be able to put a small dent in the number of kidney transplant patients yearly. But that too will have to be seen in future as there is an issue of people being prone to be frightened of transplantation procedures.
Unless the citizens become more aware of the situation and grimness of it the statistics will always be the same and numerous lives will be lost. The doctors here have a key role in playing as mediators between organ donors and receivers. Their efforts in establishing a trust between the two parties will be able to increasing the numbers of successful transplants in future.