A movement against lifestyle-associated diseases is the need of the hour, Gomathy Narasimhan, Senior Consultant and Liver and Renal Transplant Surgeon, HPB Surgery and Liver Transplantation, Renal Transplantation, Dr. Rela Institute and Medical Centre, said.
Delivering the S.V. Venkatesan and Malathi Venkatesan TANKER Foundation Memorial Lecture on “Inspire to Aspire,” at the 30th annual charity and awards nite of Tamilnad Kidney Research Foundation (TANKER Foundation) on Wednesday, she said, “We should not stop with surgeries and transplants. We are battling lifestyle diseases that are causing liver and kidney failures. All of us — as individuals, as medical professionals and as transplant professionals — have a role to play to curb this.”
Raising the need to focus on lifestyle-associated diseases, she cited their own patient data on liver diseases that found that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease accounted for 42% during 2014-2019. Alcohol was not the primary cause, she said and added that it accounted for 18% during the same period.
She said that doctors had a bigger responsibility to talk to patients and work on rehabilitating patients post-transplant. She pointed out that post-transplant, some patients ended up with obesity and diabetes. “We need a big haul for this…We need a movement against lifestyle associated diseases,” she said.
Noting that chronic kidney diseases (CKD) was a major public health challenge in India, Malini Parthasarathy, Chairperson, The Hindu Group Publishing Private Ltd, said it was imperative that more resources, public and private, go towards addressing the chronic kidney disease.
She said it was estimated that a population of over 7.8 million in India was living with chronic kidney disease. “The estimate that almost 2.5 lakh persons die of kidney failure in India every year and is the third largest killer after malignancy and heart disease, has staggering implications for public health care,” she said.
She pointed out that there was a need to create awareness on increasing kidney donations in the country. She lauded the efforts of TANKER Foundation, including for making dialysis affordable and for raising awareness of healthcare in a critical area as chronic kidney disease.
She presented the K.V. George Kottukulam Memorial TANKER and Kerala Kidney Research Foundation Young Investigator Award to Manish Ramesh Balwani, The Renny Abraham TANKER Foundation Love for Service Award to Vivek Kute, The K. Venkatanarayana TANKER Foundation Awareness Award to Manjula Kalyan, The La Renon TANKER Foundation for the Sake of Honour Award to Gomathy Narasimhan and The La Renon TANKER Foundation Lifetime Achievement Awards to Tonmoy Das and Sandeep Guleria and The Ashok Sankaralingam TANKER Foundation Patient Endowment to four patients.
C. Sylendra Babu, Director-General of Police, Tamil Nadu and Jayanth Murali, former DGP, were felicitated.
Georgi Abraham, founder-trustee, and Latha A. Kumaraswami, managing trustee, TANKER Foundation, spoke.