A health expert has called on the National Health Insurance Fund to include peritoneal dialysis in their packages for patients who might not be able to access haemodialysis.
Dialysis is a way of cleaning your blood when your kidneys can no longer do the job.
It gets rid of your body's wastes, extra salt and water, and helps to control your blood pressure.
Peritoneal dialysis is a treatment for kidney failure that uses the lining of the patient's abdomen, or belly, to filter blood inside the body.
During the process, a soft plastic tube (catheter) is placed in the belly by surgery and a sterile cleansing fluid is put into the belly through this catheter.
After the filtering process is finished, the fluid leaves the body through the catheter.
Dr Doris Kinuthia, a pediatric nephrologist says the procedure will help save thousands of children who are too small to fit on normal dialysis machines.
"If you are in a position where you cannot reach the haemodialysis unit but you are in a hospital where you have a surgeon or a physician, a peritoneal catheter can be put into your abdomen and you can get dialysis and your life can be saved," she says.
According to the medic, the process has been used on several women at the Kenyatta National Hospital who had gone into acute kidney injury because of complications of birth such as preeclampsia and many of them survived.
She said peritoneal dialysis is a simple procedure that can be done not only by nephrologists but ordinary doctors, clinical officers and nurses.
"I would like the NHIF to consider putting more funds in supporting peritoneal dialysis because this is a life-saving procedure," she said.
"It is very important for our children because some of them are too small to fit onto the haemodialysis machines and so we often use peritoneal dialysis on them so that is something that needs to be looked into."
The medic says children in low-income countries including Kenya are at a big risk of kidney diseases.
Kinuthia, who is also a lecturer at East Africa Kidney Institute says despite children being vulnerable, diagnosis of renal diseases often comes very late when the disease has advanced.
She has warned that as the country battles a prolonged drought and famine due to failed five rain seasons, many children are already succumbing not only to the drought but also to other diseases such as diarrhoea and acute kidney injury due to their vulnerability.
Late presentation to health facilities and the inability of medics to pick the diseases early enough are also putting children at great risk.
