The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre and all States on a public interest writ petition for protection of people suffering from renal diseases and kidney failure.
A Bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices Ranjana Desai and Ranjan Gogoi issued the notice on the petition filed by advocate Sanjeeb Panigrahi, who alleged that the government had utterly failed to contain the increasing number of deaths thanks to an insufficient number of dialysis centres. According to the petitioner, two deaths occur every five minutes and 547 deaths everyday and 2,00,000 deaths annually.
Quoting the National Kidney Foundation, he said about 7.85 million people were suffering from renal diseases in different degrees of chronicity. Out of these, 31.2-41 per cent were chronic kidney cases. Only 22.5 per cent got dialysis treatment. “We have about 950 nephrologists across the country for treatment of renal diseases,” he said.
According to an estimate of the Union Health Ministry, the petitioner said, “we need at least 50,000 dialysis machines but we are having [only] 20 per cent of the requirement. We have about 700 dialysis centres — 80 per cent in the private sector. About 20,000 patients are undergoing treatment annually. We have 170 government-recognised Kidney Transplant Centres [doing about 3500 transplants annually].”
He sought a direction to the Centre and the States to have at least one dialysis centre in each district headquarters hospital throughout the country; to ensure regulations or quality control mechanisms for units run by private hospitals with respect to supportive/palliative care to provide efficacious medical support to citizens afflicted with chronic kidney/renal disease and in need of dialysis at regular intervals.
