KATHMANDU, April 5: The government has been enforcing nationwide lockdown for the nearly two weeks to prevent the spread of coronavirus. But the lockdown has been taking its toll on the patients with chronic conditions. One such case has been recently noticed on social media. Sweta and Swati Adhikari tweeted to share their mother's serious health issue. She has to go for regular kidney dialysis.
Here is what they posted:
Our mother is a regular dialysis patient. She is suffering from genetic Chronic Kidney Disease stage-4 (CKD-4), also known as kidney failure. She goes to the hospital to undergo dialysis 3 times a week-4 hours per session.
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Hemodialysis acts as an artificial kidney that filters waste and water from her blood. If she misses her dialysis session, the excess water and toxins build up in her system and result in severe complications. Due to the ongoing coronavirus lockdown, her hospital has cut down the dialysis time to 2 days per week- 2 to 3 hours per session.
Most of the dialysis equipment such as tubes, chemicals, and medicines come from India. Because of the lockdown in India, the hospital is cutting down the dialysis hours to sustain the current stock of equipment. There is already a shortage and soon might completely run out of the equipment and medicine supplies. The decreased time of dialysis session has already started affecting our mother’s health. In her last dialysis session, she experienced a spike in blood pressure, and could not continue the treatment. Also, a patient next to her experienced difficulty and vomiting. If this continues and the supplies run out, it will threaten the lives of thousands of dialysis patients. Coronavirus lockdown should not affect current dialysis patients. These patients completely depend on dialysis to continue their daily lives. We request the Nepal Government and the Ministry of Health to seriously look into this matter and take immediate action.
While announcing lockdown, the government had said that people would be allowed to go out for essential supplies, including groceries and medicines. But many patients living in Kathmandu are now finding it difficult to travel amid the ban on public transport. Many have been forced to use private transport, such as cycles or motorbikes to travel.
On social media, people are criticizing the government for imposing the lockdown without proper planning. For now, there is little data available on patients with rare, chronic conditions like the mother of Adhikari sisters. The lockdown should have left many without stocks of their hard-to-source medication.
In various urban cities of Nepal, drugs are available, but transport is not. If the lockdown continues for one more week after April 7, the country could quickly be facing a non-COVID humanitarian crisis if the government fails to act to restore health services, particularly for those with critical conditions that require sustained treatment.
The tales of kidney transplant patients dealing with exhausting trips to hospital for their weekly dialysis appointments have been reported from several parts of the country. The elderly have been left vulnerable in the lockdown and the government has been failing to address their genuine concerns. It is because the government has put its all efforts to contain COVID-19.
In Nepal, doorstep medical assistance is almost impossible during this lockdown period.
