Ahmedabad, March 13 (IANS) Kidney patients in India do not have access to quality renal care, due to lack of infrastructure, awareness about the disease and methods of prevention, according to the Indian Renal Foundation (IRF). Mobilising public awareness about the disease, which is crippling in nature, would help in preventing it, IRF chairman Chinnubhai R. Shah told reporters here on the occasion of World Kidney Day.

Such efforts should be backed by infrastructure upgrade, training and education, research as well as efforts to coordinate kidney donations, Shah added.

World Kidney Day is being observed Thursday.

The IRF started in 2002 as a voluntary, not-for-profit organization. It has four chapters at Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot.

“Our aim is prevention of this disease. We explain to people through various programmes the basic idea of what the kidney is and its location, function and we stress on prevention. We also talk about what dialysis and transplant would cost. So far we have held 1,500 camps,” Shah said.

IRF has also launched a “Save a Life” programme to support treatment of poor patients who suffer from kidney failure.

“We donate one dialyser and tubing to patients. So far we have helped 2,000 patients since the programme began in 2002 at an average of 35 patients per month,” he said.

He called for public awareness over brain dead patients whose kidney or liver or eyes can be used to save someone’s life.

“Whenever we receive a call from any ICU of a brain dead patient, we approach the relatives and counsel them for organ donation. This has led 14 cadaver (brain dead body) donations so far in the last two years,” Shah said, adding that more often brain dead cases are those where head injury occurs during accidents.