Understanding kidney disease in rural central Uganda – Findings from a qualitative study

ABSTRACT

As part of a multicentre study on kidney disease (ARK) undertaken in Malawi, South Africa and Uganda we undertook a social science component in Uganda to gather information on people’s understandings and perceptions of a diagnosis of kidney dysfunction, treatment and treatment seeking. We recruited 46 people who had been given information about kidney dysfunction and had been found to have some, usually early, signs of mild impairment. Data were collected during two in-depth interviews. Most participants had heard of the condition, but half denied knowledge of the health status of their kidneys or receiving results of tests from the clinic team. This response may have been linked to a lack of symptoms, for those with early stage kidney dysfunction. The treatment people reported receiving caused some uncertainty about condition severity. This may be because several people were treated for other conditions (such as urinary tract infections) and did not require treatment specifically for kidney disease. In our study, participants assessed illness severity based on symptoms and treatment and compared with the progression of other conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Kidney dysfunction
• kidney impairment
• non-communicable diseases
• qualitative methods
• Uganda

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the participants for giving us their time and information for this study. We thank Ronald Makanga for help with sample selection and the study clinic team for their support. We are very grateful for the contribution of Grace Tumwekwase who died at the end of 2019. Grace was an interviewer in the first phase of data collection and made a large contribution to the conduct of the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the GlaxoSmithKline Africa NCD Open Lab Programme [grant ref 8111]. LAT was funded by a Wellcome Trust intermediate clinical fellowship [101143/Z/13/Z]. DB, RN and JS are partly funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under the MRC/DFID Concordat agreement and is also part of the EDCTP2 programme supported by the European Union. JS acknowledges the support of THRiVE-2, a DELTAS Africa grant # DEL-15-011 from Wellcome Trust [grant number # 107742/Z/15/Z] and the UK government. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.