AUSTRALIAN surgeons have advised locals to drink a lot of water, after a high number of surgeries to remove kidney stones from patients at Labasa Hospital.
Dr Rahul Rindani, an Australian urosurgeon who arrived in the weekend with the Sai organisation said most cases were adults.
He did not have the stats available during the interview but he said the number of cases treated so far this week was quite high.
“So far this week, the most cases I have seen is kidney stones and people need to start drinking a lot of water if they want to prevent this,” Dr Rindani said.
“In a hot country such as Fiji where a lot of people do work outside, they need to drink a lot of water at least have three litres a day.
“And it is best for parents to start giving their children lots of water at a young age and not replace water with any other drinks.”
Dr Rindani has urged communities in the North to live a healthy life to prevent diseases such as kidney stones because there were no special surgeons based in the Labasa Hospital.
“Cases of kidney stones cannot be treated in the Labasa Hospital because the surgeon, who is based in Suva can only do a few surgeries when he comes,” he said.
“So it’s best to prevent the disease and just drink a lot of water.
“The treatment done here of removing the stone is different from what we do in Australia where we use an equipment that can break the stone while inside the patient.”
But, Dr Rindani said the best way to prevent having a kidney stone was to drink a lot of water.
“There are a lot of causes and eating a high protein diet with red meat and too much salt are part of it.”
