Hi dear all, I’m from Mozambique, I have 28 years old (married and my wife is pregnant for 2 months), I was diagnosed with CKD in 2018 when my creatinine was about 300umol/l and with high blood pressure disease at the same consultancy. My mother and her father died with CKD as there was no treatment for this health condition in my country, my mother died at 2004 she got a malaria with CKD. My father committed suicide in 2006 due to financial problems. I have 1 brother and 2 sisters, we grow up with such a bad health program and financial situation but we were strong and me and my older sister succeeded as I studied engineering and now I’m able to take care of them (for at least now as I can walk and work). I’m currently employed in a power plant far away from medical centers in my country in a village called Songo, there is no way I can do any treatment in there where I work and somehow when my company discovered that I have this disease and the stage that soon I’ll need to start hemodialysis and they’reprobably going to send me out of the company as I need to travel 1 or 2 times a week to do the hemodialysis in the capital of Mozambique (Maputo, 1500km away from where I live and work)), I absolutely know that this option is not viable but there is no other option as Mozambique does not support perictoneal dyalisis.So basically as the nature of my job, I can’t work in Maputo to do the treatment and I can’t work in Songo as I will need to travel 10h each week.
Well, talking about my disease, there is no transplant program in Mozambique and no surgery, the health services are bad and probably my future will end up as my mother. Just to know, the minimum monthly salary in my country is ~100USD and the hemodialysis cost an average of 2000USD/month. No one can afford that. If I loose my job I will not get any other to cover the costs of hemodialysis as in my country there is only 1 vacancy at all in average per year for more than 10k unemployed electrical engineers. So I ask a friend of mine from Germany if he can find me a work with my health condition so I can move there to start any treatment and hope to be in a transplant waiting list if possible. That’s my first option as he said he will do the best to search for a job to me so I need to wait and be patient. My second option is to try to apply for some long term agreements with my country and Portugal and pray to be in one of the 50 guys that luckily will go to Portugal next year to solve health problems. The third option is wait the time my company will unemploy me due to disability to work and wait for my time to pass to another world (I’m sorry to write that).
Currently I’m not doing any medical treatment for the kidney disease and they don’t know the reason for this disease and they keep delaying the start of the dialysis stating that “Im young to start this treatment”…
In future if I get better, or while I’m still able to do some programming I will try to open a community and donations site to help people with CKD in my country and with help of all of you, I’ll try to make the community visible enough to encourage the country minister of health to introduce programs of kidney diseases, transplant waiting lists, etc. while the government does not start helping, with the donations I hope to help or create hemodialysis, perictoneal dialogue programs and transfer patients to another countrys for transplant after creating a kidney donations database and incentivation programs.
Sorry for this long text, finally, I’m also writing this post to share this bad experience of life I’m having and to say that CKD is is not the end as there is a lot of people out there with bad situations and no options as me, we need to be strong and keep the mind positive. Also, Im writing to know your ideas on how to get my self into a waiting list or if someone can help me to find a job in any country where I can get a second opportunity to live with treatments for my disease.
Wish you all the best.
Munir Bragança
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