...deceased too had kidney disease

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 18

The deaths of young people in the district, who tested positive for Covid-19, emphasise the fact that people of all age groups are vulnerable to the disease.

A 30-year-old woman with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and diabetes died here today is the 14th Covid death in the district.

She is the third person in the district who died of Covid and the second person to die in her 30s and suffering from CKD. The first person who died in the 30s was a 30-year-old Qazi Mohalla man who breathed his last on May 6. He too had a CKD. On June 11, a 38-year-old Kot Sadiq woman also died after she tested positive.

While the ruling discourse on Covid is that elderly and those with weak immunity need to be careful, the threat to those who have renal problems or chronic-kidney conditions, even among the young, has been missing from the government communications.

With the lockdown restrictions relaxed, hundreds of people, especially youngsters, are out on streets and at market places. They are giving two hoots to the social distancing norms.

Barring two persons aged 86 and 91, all deceased in the district were in the age group of 48 to 65. Most of them had comorbidities such as heart diseases, renal problems, kidney-related ailments, hypertension and diabetes.

Dr Raghavendra Singh, a nephrologist at India Kidney Hospital, Jalandhar, said: “The majority of Covid mortalities, not only in the city or the state but also in the country, have underlying kidney conditions or infections. Among the deceased, Covid infection is either preceded or followed by a kidney infection or complications. Even before Covid, there was a dramatic rise in cases of kidney disease and for the past some years, every year there has been a 7 to 10 per cent rise in patients reported with kidney problems. In such a scenario, patients with kidney conditions need to be extra careful.”

Dr Singh said kidney disease was common among people and 10 per cent of the population was bound to have a kidney condition and 50 per cent of the diabetics also have kidney problems. He said kidney-related ailments was divided in 10 groups — people with diabetes, stone diseases, genetic kidney conditions, those ailments caused due to consumption of fast food and excessive medicines and those who consume alcohol or drugs.