China has four times as many patients with chronic kidney disease as the US, according to a recent report at Bloomberg, and is spending vast amounts on health care - twice as much last year as in 2008. But increasing rates of kidney disease as pushing up the costs for individual families. A staggering 13% of families send at least 40% of their income on health care products; the average family spends 13% of it's income on health care. In an attempt to reduce the burden, the government is promoting the use of peritoneal dialysis as opposed to the more expensive hemodialysis (although lower salaries for doctors and nurses means it is only 10% more costly than peritoneal dialysis, unlike in the West).
Rising rates of diabetes in Asia, and especially in China are increasing the strain on dialysis centres. Many patients in China die within five years even with dialysis. Fresenius Medical is building its first dialysis clinic in the region, a center in the eastern province of Jiangsu that will care for about 40 patients when it opens midyear, it said. It has agreements to provide dialysis machines and disposable products to 52 clinics, and plans to drive growth in China primarily through partnerships with local clinics and management contracts, Fresenius Medical said.
