App will educate people on 'tough choices' those stricken with kidney disease have to face
by Teo Xuanwei, 3 Dec 2012
The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) has launched a mobile phone application to raise awareness about kidney health amid rising numbers of end-stage renal disease sufferers and an older patient profile.
Speaking at the International Volunteers Day celebration yesterday, NKF Chairman Koh Poh Tiong cited the "worrying" figure of end-stage renal disease patients in Singapore increasing by about 1,000 per year.
He also noted that four in five of NKF's patients now are above the age of 51, have other medical conditions and are also more physically dependent. When NKF started providing haemodialysis in 1987, this was not the case, he added.
Going by the current trend of 4-per-cent more kidney disease patients each year, Mr Koh estimated that NKF "will have to care for an additional 500 patients by 2016".
The voluntary welfare organisation now has 3,000 patients.
The app, called Tough Choices, details what happens when one is diagnosed with kidney failure and the kind of financial and emotional struggles he and his family goes through.
Mr Koh also shared the stories of some of its dedicated volunteers, such as cabby Sim Heng Lai, who drives patients for their hospital appointments and dialysis for free.
Another example is Ms Patricia Yeo and her husband, who have cleaned a wheelchair-bound NKF patient's home weekly for the past seven months.
Meanwhile, NKF volunteers - including, for the first time, its patients - also distributed goodie bags to about 150 elderly people living in rental flats in Whampoa yesterday to commemorate International Volunteers Day.
They will distribute more of these goodie bags, which contain dry goods, to some 350 other elderly people who live alone in Taman Jurong next week.
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