March is National Kidney Month! It’s a good time to think about dialysis–and how sad it is that the U.S. lags so far behind the rest of the industrialized world. 20 million Americans have chronic kidney disease (CKD), and 20 million more are at risk. About 375,000 require dialysis–of which 92% do conventional hemodialysis (CHD): 3 treatments/week of 3-4 hours. This is not enough dialysis for most to live healthy and purposeful lives. We want Medicare and the Congressional Kidney Caucus to support better treatment. Won’t you please sign our petition to show your support?
1. Please take a minute and go to http://www.petitiononline.com/eodD0903/petition.html
2. Please forward this message to everybody in your address book.
3. Please post this message to all of your social networking friends.
4. Please post this message to all of the internet forums and groups to which you belong.
The U.S has the worst dialysis outcomes of any industrialized nation. Supporting every other day in-center treatments will allow those managing their illness with conventional hemodialysis to avoid the ‘long weekend’ with no treatment—which many studies have shown triples the risk of sudden death from a heart attack. Even this won’t allow the U.S. to catch up; that won’t happen until longer and more frequent treatments are made more widely available. But it’s a start! Please give this vital change your support!