On March 6, 2024, the Kidney Patient and Donor Alliance Canada and its Patient Partner Coalition (PPC) will be hosting the Kidney Advocacy Day Event at Queens Park, Toronto, where we will be meeting with government leadership, healthcare administrators, and care providers to promote the Transplant 1st Campaign and discuss the need to increase kidney transplants and save lives while lowering healthcare costs.
As outlined in the Executive Summary of the White Paper the group is preparing for release this month, the cost of providing dialysis to patients with end stage kidney disease is one of the most expensive publicly funded medical treatments in Canada. Further, 80 per cent of patients on dialysis become too ill to work, resulting in an additional $300 million per year in costs to disability insurance and CPP.
The five-year mortality rate for hemodialysis patients remains unacceptably high at approximately 50 per cent, rivaling the mortality rates of stage IV cancer. In 2021, 29,835 Canadians were on dialysis and only five per cent of them received a kidney transplant.
If we could increase the number of patients on dialysis who receive transplants by just one per cent (from the current five per cent of patients on dialysis to six per cent), an additional 288 transplants could occur every year – and up to 1,440 more lives could be saved over five years. Almost half of these lives saved would be Ontarians. We expect the Kidney Advocacy Day to be very successful, with the PPC members building connections that will improve access to kidney transplants for kidney patients across Canada.