Diabetes is leading cause of kidney failure in Guyana

Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure in Guyana, Dr Hemchand Barran, a nephrologist at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) revealed on Friday.

According to Dr Barran, patients who are diagnosed with diabetes are more at risk of suffering from kidney failure.
“Seventy per cent of our patients approximately, end up with kidney disease, and about half of those end up on dialysis because of diabetes,” Dr Barran stated at a press conference held at the GPHC.
He noted that as of December last year, there have been some 200 patients receiving dialysis treatment for kidney failure with 10 to 15 patients hospitalised. All of these patients need a kidney transplant, he revealed.
The nephrologist said, “The age category for us with the most kidney failure is 30 to 50 years old and then I could go a bit broader maybe 45 to 65 years.” He noted that more men are affected than women.
Barran also explained that there is a difficulty when it comes to detecting and diagnosing kidney disease as it is silent in the earlier stages.
“It is sometimes difficult to diagnose or pick up when you have kidney disease because it goes silent in the early stages,” he said.
Routine check-ups for diabetic patients is the best way to counter kidney disease, Dr Barran recommended.
With the recent passing of the Human Organ and Tissue Transplant Bill 2021 at the 35th sitting of the National Assembly in January this year, a transplant lab would further facilitate and enable persons to undergo transplant surgeries in Guyana, without having to leave the country. The Bill will pave the way for the setting up of an agency and a registry that will manage the transplant of human organs in Guyana.
As such, Dr Boland Persaud, who is attached to the Transplant and Vascular Surgery Department at the GPHC, revealed that the hospital will be constructing a transplant lab to facilitate cross-matching for transplant patients.
“We’re actually working on getting our own transplant lab to facilitate cross-matching,” Persaud said.
Once the lab is fully functional, it is expected to save numerous lives and reduce the high cost for patients on dialysis.
Cross-matching is a test performed before a blood transfusion as part of blood compatibility testing. Normally, this involves adding the recipient’s blood plasma to a sample of the donor’s red blood cells. Currently, Guyana does not offer this type of testing; cross-matching is done overseas, which takes up time and is costly. (G2)