Kidney Disease Linked to Agrochemical Exposure Spikes in El Salvador
Kidney Disease Linked to Agrochemical Exposure Spikes in El Salvador
Wednesday, 23 September 2015 00:00
By Emma Lawlor, ecoviva | News Analysis
El Salvador is struggling with a growing health epidemic among its rural residents: Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). In 2008, the country registered the world’s highest mortality rate from kidney failure. Over 3,000 people died from CKD between just January 2010 and July 2014. Doctors diagnose 60 new cases each month.
Traditionally, CKD is a secondary effect of diabetes or hypertension. In the early 2000s, Central Americans began noticing significant numbers of CKD cases among otherwise healthy agricultural workers and rural residents. Researchers believe this new form ofkidney disease is caused by some combination of agrochemicalexposure and dehydration. Yet the only consensus is that the causes are complicated, likely multifactorial, and stem from the entrenched inequalities and poverty that affect rural Central America.
While medical and public health researchers continue to heatedly debate the epidemic’s exact causes, and intergovernmental cooperation has so far been minimal, Salvadorans are recognizing that building a response cannot wait. In 2013, an attempt to ban the importation and use of 53 agrochemicals nationally was, in part, a CKD-prevention effort. And the Ministry of Health (MINSAL), with support from the Pan American Health Organization and Cuban doctors, has sponsored research and clinical interventions.
The Lower Lempa has been the launching point for a number of these efforts, due to the region’s high rates of CKD as well as its strong local tradition of social mobilization and organization. “There is something very positive in these communities,” former Minister of Health Dra. Maria Isabel Rodriguez told me, speaking of MINSAL’s productive collaborations around CKD in the Lower Lempa.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/32927-kidney-disease-linked-to-agrochemical-exposure-spikes-in-el-salvador
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