Topics Covered:
- Issues related to health.
New guidelines released for peritoneal dialysis services
What to study?
For Prelims: What is Peritoneal dialysis.
For Mains: Concerns and challenges present, need for govt intervention.
Context: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has come out with a set of guidelines for establishing peritoneal dialysis services under the Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme.
The new guidelines, among other things, envisage providing training to community health workers to provide support to persons on peritoneal dialysis at home or in primary health care settings.
Significance of these guidelines:
- The guidelines aim to serve as a comprehensive manual to states that intend to set up peritoneal dialysis services and for providers of peritoneal dialysis as a `best practice’ document to ensure delivery of high quality and cost effective services.
- It also aims to achieve equity in patient access to home-based peritoneal dialysis, reduce the overall cost of care to the system by focusing on efficient leveraging of resources, and bring in consistency of practice, pricing and a full range of product availability.
How is peritoneal dialysis performed?
During peritoneal dialysis, a cleansing fluid (dialysate) is circulated through a tube (catheter) inside a part of the abdominal cavity (peritonealcavity).
The dialysate absorbs waste products from blood vessels in the abdominal lining (peritoneum) and then is drawn back out of the body and discarded.
Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme:
Rolled out in 2016 as part of the National Health Mission(NHM) for provision of free dialysis services to the poor.
The Guidelines for Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme envisage provision of dialysis services under NHM in PPP (Public Private Partnership) mode.
Need for govt intervention:
- Every year about 2.2 Lakh new patients of End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) get added in India resulting in additional demand for 3.4 Crore dialysis every year.
- With approximately 4950 dialysis centres, largely in the private sector in India, the demand is less than half met with existing infrastructure.
- Since every Dialysis has an additional expenditure tag of about Rs.2000, it results in a monthly expenditure for patients to the tune of Rs.3-4 Lakhs annually.
- Besides, most families have to undertake frequent trips, and often over long distances to access dialysis services incurring heavy travel costs and loss of wages for the patient and family members accompanying the patient.
- This therefore leads to financial catastrophe for practically all families with such patients.
- It has been felt that both in terms of provision of this important life saving procedure and also for reducing impoverishment on account of out of pocket expenditure for patients, a Dialysis program is required.
Sources: the Hindu.
