Around 72,000 kidney-failure patients need blood filtering.

VietNamNet Bridge – The number of people who suffer from kidney failure in Vietnam is on the rise, with around 8,000 new patients a year, according to a workshop held in Hanoi on March 12.

Professor Nguyen Nguyen Khoi, the leading expert about kidney diseases at the Hanoi-based Bach Mai Hospital, said Vietnam has more than 5 million patients, accounting for 6.73% of the population. Annually, there are around 8,000 patients more on average.

The causes of kidney failure are chronic nephritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney stones.

Prof. Khoi said Vietnam has around 72,000 kidney-failure patients who are at the last stage of disease who need blood filtering.

However, only 10% of them can use a blood filtering service. The remaining 90% will die because they can’t afford to use this service, which is very expensive at US $25 per use.

Many patients don’t know about their disease until it develops badly. Up to 50% of patients were diagnosed wrongly at the beginning, which shortened their life.

VietNamNet/ANTD