Lifestyle diseases can add to expats' burden

Abu Dhabi: Increasing fatal road accidents and lifestyle diseases leading to fatal kidney and heart diseases in India may put more financial burden on Indian expatriates in the UAE, an activist has warned.

"More than two million Indians may have to spend a huge chunk of their hard earned money on medical treatment of their dependents back home because medical insurance is not yet popular there," Uma Preman, Director of Santhi Medical Information Centre, a well-reputed medical charity in Kerala, told Gulf News.

She is on a short visit to the UAE. She highlighted a World Health Organisation (WHO) report saying, with an estimated 50.8 million people living with diabetes, India has the world's largest diabetes population. India loses more than 100,000 lives due to road traffic crashes every year.

She said that more than a million Keralites among the Indians should play significant role as their state [Kerala] has the highest rate of road accidents, alcohol consumption and lifestyle diseases leading to fatal kidney and heart diseases in the country.

Transparency

She believes her efforts to prompt the Kerala state government to make a transparent and simple mechanism for organ transplantation and awareness about it will reduce fatal road accidents in the state and lifestyle diseases leading to kidney failures.

Preman, 41, had donated one of her kidneys in 1999 to a stranger, a 24-year-old orphan who was in a critical condition but had to look after his younger siblings after the death of his parents. Since then the recipient has been leading a healthy life and actively working with the charity.

Both of them have approached Kerala High Court to prompt the state to enact rules for organ transplantation for chronic patients after collecting the same from brain-dead cases.

The neighbouring states Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have a transparent and simple system, she said.

At the moment the state demands 49 documents from donor and recipient, which are almost impossible for them to produce, Preman said.

Willingness

According to National Transport Authority, nine brain-dead cases occur in Kerala a day in road accidents and their organs can be donated to the patients, Preman said. If the identification papers like driving licence have a provision to mark the willingness of the holder to donate his or her organs, the hospitals can do it immediately in the event of a brain death.

"Awareness campaigns to donate organs will urge people to think about value of life and drive carefully on the roads [which happened in the US according to experts]," she said. The plight of recipients of organs will also raise awareness about lifestyle diseases leading to kidney and heart failures, Preman said.

Charity: free dialysis

Uma Preman's charity provides free dialysis to thousands of needy kidney patients everyday for which she gets generous support from expatriates in the UAE.

There are 300,000 kidney patients in Kerala, who are mostly between 20 and 40 but unable to work. "All those patients can come back to productive life, if the intended simple system helps them to get a kidney from a donor," she said. High rate of diabetes [35 per cent] causes increasing number of kidney failures, mainly due to poor food habits and lack of exercise, she said.

Contact

Those who wish to involve in awareness campaign, log on to www.santhimedicalinfo.org; santhimedicalinfo@gmail.com