Local dialysis industry highly appreciated throughout Southeast Asia

The nation currently has 350 hemodialysis units with human resources of 3,500 medical staff, while the number of hemodialysis machines stands at more than 5,500 machines which are performing dialysis for roughly 33,000 patients.

Typically, techniques include cyclic dialysis, ultrafiltration dialysis with direct replacement fluid (HDF online), and blood adsorption.

During the recent second Scientific Conference of the Vietnam Dialysis Association, Dr. Dung said that with a large number of kidney failure patients requiring dialysis, a shortage of equipment for dialysis has occurred.

“Despite plenty of efforts in the past time and being highly appreciated, the Vietnamese dialysis industry is also facing the challenge of practical requirements when chronic kidney failure patients are getting younger and younger, and the number of people needing dialysis treatment is increasing. Therefore, the dialysis industry needs to receive the greater support from the Ministry of Health and Vietnam Social Security in terms of regimes, policies and human resource training," said Dr. Dung.

In Vietnam, the demand for kidney transplant remains great, although currently only about 4,500 people have received kidney transplants. Moving forward, this figure is anticipated to increase over the following years, thereby posing many challenges to the dialysis industry.

According to details given by the Vietnam Dialysis Association, there remains a shortage of equipment for dialysis and overload in some hemodialysis units of many medical facilities. In particular, many units have been slow-paced in replacing outdated dialysis equipment, with there being more than 900 dialysis machines, equivalent to over 18%, that are over a decade old. This means that they have expired and must be replaced.

It has been estimated that over 850 million people globally suffered from chronic kidney disease in 2018. The incidence in men and women stood at 10.4% and 11.8%, respectively, with between 5.3 million and 10.5 million people on renal replacement therapy.

Statistics from the health sector indicate that along with the increase in patients suffering from diabetes and hypertension, patients with end-stage chronic kidney disease and kidney failure who require dialysis (hemodialysis) are constantly increasing. This is largely due to kidney failure being a dangerous complication of these two diseases.

Common kidney diseases today include kidney stones, glomerulonephritis, acute-chronic renal failure, and kidney cancer. With acute and chronic renal failure being two very common conditions which are usually caused by complications of many other diseases.