Prof. Gloria Ashutantang, founding African president of the Society of Nephrology

“Some regions of Cameroon do not have a nephrologist »

“Our specialty has made a lot of progress. We started with four specialists 20 years ago and today we have more than 30. But the problem is that these thirty nephrologists are where? Most of them are in Douala and Yaoundé. There are regions where there is not even a nephrologist. The nephrologist should not wait for the patient to be treated, but he should prevent the disease from happening.
The other problem is that patients who are not on dialysis are neglected. Nephrologists are badly distributed in Cameroon. As I said earlier, the good news is the treatment of dialysis itself. You know, there is kidney disease that gives you kidney failure. And kidney failure comes with a lot of complications. The kidneys control all the systems in the body. So when the kidneys don’t work, you’re in a coma, you’re anaemic. All this is because you lack calcium in yourself. So, the state has done well to subsidise dialysis. It will now cost 15,000 per year. But all the complications that kidney failure creates are not subsidised. And frankly, this poses a problem for a patient. The state knows this. There is too much talk about dialysis. We have to act first. Even if the state pays, dialysis is very expensive. When a patient is on dialysis, his whole life changes. Some days he has to be in hospital, others he doesn’t have to do anything… we have to find ways to prevent people from going on dialysis, in order to treat the disease beforehand.