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What Is The National Kidney Foundation?
The National Kidney Foundation (India) is a voluntary
organisation of concerned individuals, corporate bodies and professionals
who have pledged their time and resources toward filling a void in the
country's health services.
Why Is The Kidney Foundation So Important?
Kidneys are affected by many diseases and failure of their
function leads to more deaths than is generally known. Controlling as they
do some of the most delicately poised processes in the human body, kidneys
hold the unseen balance between life and death. After malignancy and heart
disease, kidney diseases are the third largest killer of mankind.
What Does The Kidney Foundation Do?
About 200,000 persons in India go into terminal kidney failure
every year. Millions more suffer lesser forms of kidney diseases.
To help these unfortunate patients, the Foundation gives succour in
several ways:
I. Public Education
The Foundation has a public education programme using group meetings,
associations, and mass media such as newspapers, magazines, exhibitions,
radio and television, to educate the public about kidney diseases, their
prevention, and early treatment.
II. Training
The Foundation supports and
organises full-fledged training programmes where physicians and surgeons
receive training in kidney diseases and transplantation.
III. Research
The Foundation supports
broad-based research programmes in medical centres and hospitals in India.
IV. Free Check-up
The Foundation also organises
periodic free check-ups of kidney diseases for the public. Such check-ups
help in timely detection and early treatment of kidney ailments.
V. Counselling
The Foundation organises
individual and group counselling for patients suffering from kidney
diseases. This helps them morally as well as psychologically by
eliminating their blocks manifested in the form of depression, confusion,
stubbornness and by overcoming their fears and anxieties through a
qualitative counselling relationship between the counsellor and the
counselee.
VI. Patient
Support
Besides the above, the Foundation
also provides advice and information on kidney transplant. The Foundation
operates a drug bank to give transplant patients life-sustaining drugs,
subject to availability of stock, at reasonable prices.
VII. Gift-of-Life Programme
The Foundation has now been
recognised by the Government of Maharashtra as an N.G.O. to be actively
associated with this programme. The cadaver transplant programme has been
started in the State from 27th March, 1997. This will help patients who
have no live donors to get the "Gift of Life". The availability of usable
cadaver organs will help patients waiting for transplant for a long time.
National Kidney Foundation Is Doing All It Can
However, It Needs Your
Help!
Organising research, medical
training, public education and patient support programmes, cadaveric
donation drives - these are the ways the National Kidney Foundation is
combating kidney disease.
But they all cost money -
considerable sums of money.
The Foundation needs your help and
requests you to:
Give us what you can. Donate your
time, your interest, and money. All the resources you can muster for a
worthy cause.
Donations would be exempt from tax
as per provisions of Section 80-G of I.T. Act.
The Foundation also requests you
to become a Member.
Members, except Associate, shall
have the right to vote and also be eligible to be elected as an
office-bearer or member of the Foundation's Executive Committee.
For more information please
consult your family doctor or be in touch with your National Kidney Foundation (India).
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