Raising Kidney Health Awareness

Kidney Awareness Month is March – but for Tamika Roberts, Bahamas Kidney Association (BKA) president — raising awareness about the function of kidneys and preventative measures, and improving the lives of people affected by kidney disease is more than a one-month, once a year activity. For Roberts informing and educating people about kidney disease is year-round.

“When we formed the Bahamas Kidney Association (BKA), it was never meant to be an awareness month thing,” said Roberts. “We never wanted to be a one month, once-a-year organization because of the need.”

Roberts, along with volunteers, on Saturday worked the Harbour Bay Shopping Plaza, offering free health checks — hypertension, glucose and cholesterol – to people. It’s something the organization does monthly.

The BKA president said it’s important and that they see the importance of doing the free health checks consistently every month, to raise awareness.

“Many people don’t know that hypertension and diabetes, are key indicators in kidney disease. And we test for those and cholesterol, and if a person gets an elevated result, we urge the person to go to the doctor and get checked out,” she said. “Most times people are busy and even miss annuals. And we have come across people elevated and that prompts them to go.”

Roberts’ advocacy is personal.

Six years ago, she donated one of her kidneys to her younger brother Antonio Roberts, who was in kidney failure. She did so, knowing that she wanted to help give her brother a normal life. With both his kidneys in failure, and knowing that he needed a kidney transplant, or face the remainder of his life on dialysis, she said she could not live with her brother on dialysis, knowing that she could help.

“I saw what he went through three days a week, four hours on the machine each time. I saw what he was like when he came off the dialysis machine.”

At the time of her kidney donation in June 2018, she said her brother had two young children to provide for, and her thoughts went to him not being alive for his children.

“I said if I could help him in any way for him to be here, I would do it for my niece and nephew. I felt bad for him, especially with him being younger than me. Then, there’s the fact that I see what dialysis does to patients. Dialysis totally changes you. It deforms people and strips them off their dignity,” she said.

Roberts gave her brother one of her kidneys because she wanted to give him his dignity back.

The BKA president said her continued advocacy is important because kidney disease continues to be on the rise and it is her intention to ensure that it remains in the forefront. Roberts says it’s a topic that is too big to ignore.

“I often get calls from people who have have been diagnosed and people being diagnosed continues to increase.”

Prior to speaking with The Nassau Guardian, Roberts said she received a call from someone who wanted to speak with her about their teenaged niece receiving a diabetes diagnosis. She said when she receives calls like that it reminds her of the importance of continuing to raise awareness. And of following doctor’s orders if they’ve been diagnosed.

BKA was established with two main purposes in mind – to improve the lives of people affected by kidney disease, and to reduce the instances of kidney failure in The Bahamas through public education efforts. It’s with this in mind that the association’s mission of raising awareness, providing support, and advocating for improved kidney health in people continues year-round.

“A lot of people don’t know they have kidney disease until it’s too late,” said Roberts.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD), also called chronic kidney failure, involves a gradual loss of kidney function. Chronic kidney disease occurs when a disease or condition impairs kidney function, causing kidney damage to worsen over several months or years.

A person’s kidneys filter wastes and excess fluids from their blood, which are then removed in urine. Advanced CKD can cause dangerous levels of fluid, electrolytes and wastes to build up in the body.

In the early stages of CKD, a person might have few signs or symptoms, and not even realize they have kidney disease until the condition is advanced.

Diseases and conditions that cause CKD include type 1 or type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, glomerulonephritis (an inflammation of the kidney’s filtering units), interstitial nephritis (an inflammation of the kidney’s tubules and surrounding structures), polycystic kidney disease or other inherited kidney diseases, prolonged obstruction of the urinary tract from conditions such as enlarged prostate, kidney stones and some cancers, vesicoureteral reflux (a condition that causes urine to back up into the kidneys), and recurrent kidney infection.

Risk factors

Factors that can increase a person’s risk of CKD includes diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, smoking, obesity, being Black, Native American or Asian American, family history of kidney disease, abnormal kidney structure, older age, frequent use of medications that can damage the kidneys.

Roberts said she frequently hears people say things like they don’t know about the relationship of high blood pressure and diabetes with kidney disease.

While Roberts said it is her hope that people never receive a KD diagnosis, once they have, she said BKA is there to assist and to also raise awareness in regards to management of their disease.

“We find it important to provide support to kidney patients, many of whom don’t have insurance. Dialysis is not cheap and prevention is better than a cure. Management of the disease will keep them off the [dialysis] machine. For those diagnosed with KD, we find it important to provide support, because kidney disease is a long-term disease.”

The president says management of the disease is taxing financially as far as medication, as well as emotionally.

BKA hosts a monthly meeting that is complimentary to anyone diagnosed with KD where they can find information from medical professionals in the kidney community that can help patients.

“These patients go through a lot – and the disease does not go away. There are treatments, but there is no cure,” said Roberts.

The meetings she said provides CKD patients with a safe space where they can go to share and get help.

“A lot of CKD patients feel there is a stigma once diagnosed with CKD and there is none,” she said.

CKD can affect almost every part of the body. Potential complications include fluid retention which could lead to swelling in the arms and legs, high blood pressure, or fluid in the lungs (pulmonary edema), a sudden rise in potassium levels in the blood which could impair the heart’s function and can be life-threatening, anemia, heart disease, weak bones and an increased risk of bone fractures, decreased sex drive, erectile dysfunction or reduced fertility, damage to the central nervous system which can cause difficulty concentrating, personality changes or seizures, decreased immune response which makes a person more vulnerable to infection, pericarditis (inflammation of the saclike membrane that envelops the heart, pregnancy complications that carry risks for the mother and the developing fetus, and irreversible damage to the kidneys (end-stage KD) eventually requiring either dialysis or a kidney transplant for survival.

“The big thing for a lot of patients is them taking control of their own health and making their health priority.”

Roberts said people have to take accountability for their own health, and that BKA provides them with the tools and the medication to live with the disease.

“It’s all about educating the kidney patient,” she said.

The BKA president encourages people to know their numbers as far as their blood pressure, sugar levels, and overall health.

“Don’t take it for granted,” she said.

Roberts and her brother’s KD experience was different because they had health insurance, but she says it was still expensive. She says many people diagnosed with KD do not have health insurance.

“When you see patients call you and tell you about the challenges they’re experiencing, it becomes a little more personal.”

After the Roberts siblings story became public, kidney patients started reaching out to the duo, trying to find out what the siblings did and to speak to them about wanting to get a transplant, and just share their stories. In an effort to get the best information to the people that reached out to them, they tried to find a kidney association to direct the patients to. They found the Kidney Foundation of The Bahamas, headed by Dr. Ada Thompson, but it was a non-functioning organization. Roberts and her brother went on to found BKA, a non-profit organization that Roberts said is not only essential – but critical in the prevention and management of kidney disease in The Bahamas.

“Building on the incredible legacy of Dr. Ada Thompson, who championed kidney disease awareness for many years, BKA was established to carry on her work with her continued support,” said Roberts. BKA was incorporated in April 2021. BKA hosts its meeting once a month at JW Pinder Building – 21 Collins Avenue.

Roberts said BKA functions with support from individuals and corporate sponsors, along with their own fundraising initiatives, which they do a lot of. During BKA’s free health checks, Roberts said people are free to leave a donation which goes to assisting the BKA with its programs.