Through telemedicine, the department hopes to address this inequality in health service provision. These units were established with funding from the national department as part of the conditional grant for the equitable redistribution of specialized health care services. This grant is specifically intended to build capacity in provinces where no Academic Hospitals were situated as part of an effort to achieve a more equitable distribution of specialised hospital services. The major cause of chronic kidney failure is uncontrolled blood pressure especially in our black communities. Acute kidney failure can occur due to water loss in the body due to diarrhoea, blood loss due to trauma and pregnancy-related complications like eclampsia where the blood pressure is high.
Dialysis is an expensive mode of treatment.
Each dialysis costs about R800 per sitting. A chronic kidney failure patient receives 3 dialysis per week. An acute dialysis may take up to 6 weeks. Due to budgetary constraints patients selected for chronic kidney dialysis should pass the strict national guidelines. A multi-professional team of doctors, nurses and social workers assesses this.