According to studies by NGOs and foundations, only 20% of kidney patients are complying with the treatment for their disease. In Ciudad Guayana they fight to care for 100% of those affected
Edwin Rosal Vásquez | Orinoco Mail
Although the number of kidney patients requiring renal replacement therapy or hemodialysis increases in Ciudad Guayana, the only out-of-hospital nephrology unit left in the city struggles to care for them all. A dialysis session in a clinic is valued between $700 to $1,000 per session and a person may require three a week.
These units, which operate outside the hospital premises, provide the service without being on the payroll of the Venezuelan Social Security Institute (IVSS), that is, the medical staff and nurses depend on the unit manager.
For this reason, the term private service leads to confusion and many patients looking for places think that they must pay and this is not the case, since the IVSS sends the dialysis material directly to these centers to care for chronic patients.
Here the demand is high and sometimes the center cannot offer a response to all patients, as it does not have sufficient installed capacity, despite the fact that it works with 30 machines known as artificial kidneys that offer treatment to three patients per day each.
The unit works in three shifts: the day begins at 5:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night, a time during which they serve between 70 to 90 patients daily.
Rossana Mayoral, a relative of a dialysis patient, indicated that three shifts are worked in two weekly groups, that is, one group is for Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, while the other is attended to on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, as is the case of his dad.
Claret Pernalette pointed out that the ability to respond is subject to the availability of a quota and, as was his case, he had to wait. Meanwhile, he received his dialysis in the nephrology service of the Dr. Raúl Leoni Hospital, in San Félix, until there was availability.
The availability for new admissions occurs when there are transfers of patients to other units, to other countries and when there are discharges because the patient dies, that is when the opportunity opens for a new kidney patient.
There have been cases in which patients’ relatives negotiate some kind of packages, but given the current national economic situation, the unknown arises. Where is a patient going to get so much money to pay and stay on dialysis all the time?
To guarantee full coverage of kidney patients in the city, a new extra-hospital unit with 30 or 20 more machines is required, in order to provide treatment to 100 percent of the population that requires dialysis in Guayana to continue. with an optimal quality of life.
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