Bhaktapur, March 8

All was set for Aarati Thakuri to donate a kidney to her 58-year-old old father Raju Pyakurel, but the doctors turned down the transplant at the last minute. They said her weight would cause complications in the surgery and postponed the procedure.

“I weigh 86 kgs and the doctors suggested that I bring down my weight to 75 kgs so that there are no complications during the operation,” shared 32-year-old Aarati.

“More than 10 per cent transplant cases in the hospital have been delayed because of obesity in the either the donor or the recipient. It’s not just a difficult procedure for the surgeons but it becomes a long recovery process for the patients as well,” said Dr Pukar Chandra Shrestha, executive director of Human Organ Transplant Center, Bhaktapur.

“Healthy upkeep of the body is extremely important for a healthy kidney,” advised Dr Shrestha adding that an estimated three million people in Nepal suffer from some kind of kidney disease.

Obesity has become one of the main causes of Chronic Kidney Disease. Chronic Kidney Disease is a non-communicable disease which doesn’t show early symptoms.

“An unhealthy lifestyle with no exercise is one of the main causes of Chronic Kidney Disease. Each kidney contains millions of tiny filters known as nephrons. Nephrons filter the blood well enough to keep a person healthy.

If the amount of obesity continues to increase, healthy nephrons need to work extra and that leads

to damage in kidneys,” explained Dr Shrestha saying over 3,000 suffer from kidney failure.