Yesterday, Kidney Hub, in collaboration with Nasese Private Hospital, officially opened a new dialysis centre in Suva.
That development is a story of progress that must be welcomed. We should be happy because more health facilities mean improved public health service delivery and better access.
For far too long, those living with kidney disease and failure, and their families, have faced life-altering challenges.
Consider the story of 22-year-old Angel Kernot.
Fresh out of high school, her life was just beginning to take shape when a routine check-up changed everything. High blood pressure led to further tests. Then came the diagnosis – stage five kidney failure.
Within months, she was on dialysis. The life she once knew and enjoyed, stopped and she became a statistic.
But numbers alone do not capture what it really feels like to walk into a clinic and be told your kidneys are failing. They do not explain, like Ms Kernot’s situation, what it means to return to university and feel like you no longer belong. It is more than that!
Kidney failure is almost a death sentence to many. And survival comes at a cost physical, emotional, and social. The problem does not arrive overnight too. It develops quietly, often driven by unmanaged non-communicable disease. By the time it is discovered, it is often too late.
Which is why the new dialysis centre, while necessary, should not be mistaken for a solution. Dialysis keeps people alive. It does not stop them from getting sick in the first place. Prevention, therefore, is always pivotal.
The responsibility lies in early screening, in healthier lifestyle options, in public awareness that shifts from slogans and into real and meaningful action. It lies in catching high blood pressure before it becomes kidney failure and in treating diabetes before it destroys organs. Angel understands this now. Her message is clear: “early detection matters”.
Director and Interventional Nephrologist Dr Amrish Krishna said the need for a dialysis centre had been long overdue and necessary.
“The demand for dialysis has increased because the amount of people who have kidney failure has increased over the last two decades,” he said.
“Over the course of the last 10 years, we must have treated close to 200 patients on dialysis, and nationally, there are over 300 patients on dialysis with all centres combined.”
Those numbers are sobering. We have more than 300 people across Fiji now relying on dialysis, with nearly 200 treated in just one centre over the past decade. It speaks to a growing burden that can no longer be ignored. But within those figures and the grave issues highlighted here, there is a hint of hope.
Ten years ago, many of those living with kidney disease may not have had access to treatment at all.
Today, they are being reached, care for, supported, and given more time with family, more time to work, and more time to hope.
