Kidney failure is a silent killer. It is roughly estimated that about two crore of people of Bangladesh have been suffering from some sorts of kidney disease. Of them 40,000 patients develops end- stage renal failure and further 20 to 30,000 people develops acute renal failure every year. Five patients die every hour from kidney failure in this country. The cost of treatment of kidney failure patient is so high that even 10 per cent people of Bangladesh can't afford the treatment.

However Bangladesh is now making fast progress in treatment of kidney diseases.All form of treatment facilities for kidney diseases are now available in Bangladesh, according to Prof. Harun-Ur-Rashid, Founder President , Kidney Foundation Bangladesh

In an interview with The Pharma World , leading pharmaceutical & health journal in Bangladesh , he said there are a few specialized treatments where Bangladesh is at par with the developed countries. Of them, one is kidney and urological disease and the other one is heart disease.

According to Prof. Dr. S A Khan, Chief Consultant, Popular Urology & Transplantation Center, Director Popular Medical College Hospital, Bangladesh, the nation now has all the modern facilities for the treatment of kidney diseases. Besides it has efficient skilled, internationally recognized urologists, nephrologists and transplant surgeons, who are competent enough to provide both medical and surgical treatment which is at par with international standards.

According to Harun Rashid the treatment for dialysis and transplantation available in Government institute and medical colleges are cheaper but in the private sector it is quite expensive.Moreover, facilities for treatment of ESRD are also not available in all parts of the country.

Most of the facilities are centered in Dhaka and few other large cities.

In kidney disease, the treatment of end-stage renal disease is by dialysis and transplantation which is available for last 20 years or even more. But, we have not been able to start cadaveric or deceased kidney transplantation, he added.

Despite the efforts of the last two years to establish cadaveric or deceased transplantation, it is has not materialised . This is where Bangla lags compared to advanced countries of the world.Bangladesh is still far behind with the stem cell. Since stem cell treatment is unique the govt. and non-govt. organizations should come forward, at least to establish stem cell in some of the institutes, so that in future there will be an artificial kidney, liver, heart or in some other genetic diseases, where external cells can put into the human body and that will be a breakthrough in the medical history, he added.