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Health Check: Affordable Dialysis Prize Announced

Kidney Dialysis

18/03/2015

Affordable Dialysis Prize Announced

BBC World Service - Health Check, Affordable Dialysis Prize Announced

Prize announced to design inexpensive dialysis machines

Two million people die each year because they can not get treatment for kidney failure. If your kidneys fail you need to have dialysis or in some cases a kidney transplant, but with a shortage of donors, dialysis is what most people need if they are to survive. Fiona Loud, who now works for the British Kidney Patient Association had dialysis herself, and she told Claudia Hammond how it works. 

Although it is unpleasant, it does save lives. Claudia talked to professor Vlado Perkovic, executive director of the George Institute for Global Health in Australia, about why people in low income countries rarely receive dialysis and the launch of the $100,000 Affordable Dialysis Prize. 

Betel Nut Chewing and Oral Cancer
In Taiwan, the government is stepping up efforts to discourage the public from the millennium-old habit of chewing betel nuts. The trees resemble coconut trees, but are smaller and the industry keeps many people employed. But the nuts have led to high rates of oral cancer and so the government is trying to persuade farmers to chop down the trees and people, to kick the habit. Cindy Sui reports from Taipei and Nantou county. 

Teenage Sperm Quality 
Geneticists at Cambridge University have discovered that young fathers are more likely to pass on genetic flaws to their children than men a decade older. They studied the DNA of 24,000 parents and their children and found 30% higher rate of DNA mutations in teenage fathers. Claudia Hammond asked Dr Peter Forster, a fellow at Murray Edwards College, to explain these results. They seem surprising, since we tend to assume that the quality of sperm drops as men ages.  

Breastfeeding, IQ and Income
A Lancet Global Health study from Brazil followed up more than 3000 babies for 30 years and found if they were breastfed for more 12 months, at 30 their IQ was 4 points higher and they earned a third more money. Claudia discusses these findings with her studio guest Sarah Boseley, health editor of The Guardian newspaper. 

(Photo: Man receiving kidney dialysis. Credit: Jay Directo/Getty I)

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