March is Kidney Health Month, when BC Renal and health organizations around the world focus on the importance of healthy kidneys and early detection of kidney disease. 

Main risk factors for kidney disease include diabetes, heart/circulation disease, family history of kidney disease, high blood pressure, and ethnicity. To learn more about these and other risk factors, and to see if you should see a family doctor, take BC Renal’s free self-assessment quiz at KidneyHealthCheck.ca.

BC Renal patient partner Thomas Ng has decades of first-hand experience living with kidney disease. At 13 years old, he was diagnosed with lupus nephritis, an autoimmune condition that causes inflammation of the kidneys, and is more common in people of Asian, African and Hispanic ethnicities. By the time Thomas was an undergrad at UBC, his kidney function had deteriorated severely and he regularly needed life-sustaining dialysis. Now years later, after countless treatments and two life-sustaining kidney transplants, he has considerable insight into the benefits of detecting kidney disease early. Read full story