AMMAN - The Ministry of Health on Wednesday launched the Jordanian End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Registry, a database of renal patients in the country, in a bid to examine treatment options.
The registry seeks to develop services provided to patients with kidney failure and facilitate transplant operations for those who need them, Minister of Health Nayef Fayez told reporters yesterday.
He added that the registry, which was developed in cooperation with the Ministry of Public Sector Development, will also enable the government to calculate annual spending on these patients in order to find alternatives for kidney dialysis and focus on transplants instead.
"This database will help us establish a national registry for organ transplants and promote the concept of organ donation in the society," the minister said.
"The government's annual spending on kidney disease amounts to JD35 million, which is high and can be reduced if we focus on organ transplantation," the minister said in a joint press conference yesterday with Minister of Public Sector Development and Minister of State for Mega- Projects Imad Fakhoury.
Patients are classified according to demographic distribution, age and sex in the registry, according to Fakhoury, who also announced that a group of nurses from the health ministry and the Royal Medical Services are currently being trained on how to use this database and deal with renal patients.
To maintain the registry, the ministry has developed an information form for renal patients to be filled out by doctors or nurses in hospitals across the Kingdom, Director of the Ministry's Non-Communicable Diseases Directorate Mohammad Tarawneh explained.
He added that the registry currently contains data on 2,666 renal patients.
The majority are based in Amman (1,385), followed by Irbid Governorate with 481 and Zarqa Governorate with 366, according to figures presented by Tarawneh at the press conference.
He noted that an Intranet system was developed to connect different hospitals across the country, which can update information related to kidney failure patients.
ESRD occurs when the kidneys are no longer able to function at a level needed for day-to-day life, according to MedlinePlus, the US National Institutes of Health's website for patients and their families. It usually occurs when chronic kidney disease has worsened to the point at which kidney function is less than 10 per cent of normal.
ESRD almost always follows chronic kidney disease; a person may have gradual worsening of kidney function for 10 to 20 years or more before progressing to ESRD, according to the website, which added that patients who have reached this stage need dialysis or a kidney transplant.
By Khetam Malkawi
© Jordan Times 2010
