Kidney Disease Cure and Prevention for Every Community with Vivek Jha

A nephrologist for over 35 years, Vivek Jha discusses kidney function and disease treatments like dialysis and kidney transplantation. He helps listeners understand

• Ties between kidney function and most other organ systems,
• Differences between acute and chronic kidney disease, and
• Efforts towards bringing disadvantaged communities the best in kidney disease treatments.

Vivekanand Jha is Executive Director at The George Institute for Global Health, India; Chair of Global Kidney Health, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College of London; and President of the International Society of Nephrology. In this podcast he covers the basics of kidney function, kidney disease, and late-stage efforts like dialysis treatment. He accompanies all these issues with an eye to the global inequalities in effective treatment and discusses ways to educate populations and bring better medicine to all. In fact, he tells listeners that he became a nephrologist partly because of these inequalities. He also describes why the biology intrigued him: kidney function presents a "microcosm of internalized medicine." In other words, the kidney affects all other organs and, as a doctor, one utilizes every element of internalized medicine to address kidney issues.

He describes the complex and essential nature of kidney functions, from filtration, adaptability to different solutes, hormone production, and the biology behind these jobs such as nephrons function. He teaches listeners about the back and forth between kidneys and blood pressure control and talks about how early stage kidney disease is usually symptomless. He advises listeners on which tests to seek out regularly for those at risk and touches on the goal of dialysis treatment. Finally, he talks more about the necessity for policy changes by governments in addressing health disparities in a holistic manner.

For more about global kidney health, see the International Society of Nephrology website, theisn.org, and for more about his team's research, see his page at The George Institute for Global Health: georgeinstitute.org/people/vivekanand-jha. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK