TEHRAN – Some 1,080 hemodialysis machines will be distributed throughout the country by the end of this year (falling on March 20, 2019), an official with the Ministry of Health has said.

“It is scheduled that 3,000 dialysis machines to be exploited in the country by the next three years,” IRNA quoted Mahdi Shadnoosh as saying on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, dialysis centers are currently working four shifts a day in some cities and even in provincial centers, he lamented.

On the other hand, the ratio of patients to dialysis beds in some provinces is concerning; however, no distributing the devices is a priority.

A hemodialysis machine produced domestically in Iran, which has undergone quality control over the past two years, will enter the dialysis cycle to review the feedback, Shadnoosh concluded.

Earlier in June, director for an Iranian knowledge-based company operating in the field of hemodialysis products Behrouz Sabok-Dast said that Hemodialysis machines designed and produced by Iranian scientists have entered the market, as some 70 machines have been installed in over 10 health centers located in 4 cities of Sarpol-e Zahab, Qom, Tehran and Hamedan.

A hemodialysis machine used in dialysis that filters a patient's blood to remove excess water and waste products when the kidneys are damaged, dysfunctional, or missing. The dialysis machine itself can be thought of as an artificial kidney.

According to an article titled “Quality of life of patients with chronic kidney disease in Iran” published in Indian J Palliat Care Journal on Jan-March, 2018, the incidence of chronic renal failure in the world is 242 cases per a million people, and 8% is added to this population each year. The population of patients with renal failure in Iran is 320,000. 

One of the ways to improve the condition of patients with chronic renal failure is hemodialysis. In addition to hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and kidney transplantation are the common alternative treatments. The patients undergoing dialysis have to spend several hours of their lives in dialysis sessions.

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