By Ajobo Mary Oluwaseun & Fatima Gidado
She sat in the waiting area, wringing her hands, her daughter in the dialysis room, barely breathing.
“She doesn’t smoke, she doesn’t drink so how did this happen?,” the mother asked in disbelief.
As a renal nurse, I hear this far too often. The truth is kidney disease is not always caused by “bad habits” but by silent, undetected conditions.
This young woman had been hypertensive since her teens, but no one knew. Without screening or monitoring, her kidneys failed.
Her mother’s shock reflected a larger failure: a health system that reacts too late, instead of preventing early.
In one market outreach in Ibadan, we screened 25 women; nine had dangerously high blood pressure and most had no idea.
Many women told us they felt fine or were “too busy selling goods.”
For them, healthcare is a luxury, not a right. Worse still, some rely on unregulated herbal remedies that worsen kidney damage instead of preventing it.
Women often the backbone of households are left vulnerable because they lack access, time, or awareness.
If they remain uninformed, so do their families. This is how entire communities fall prey to Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) that are discovered too late.
Yet advocacy is still concentrated online, leaving out market women, rural dwellers, and those without internet access.
Social media campaigns matter, but they are not enough. Real change requires offline, community-based health education, government investment in preventive care, and expansion of mobile screening and outreach programs.
At MedForHer, we see kidney disease as part of a larger NCD crisis alongside hypertension, diabetes, and sickle cell that silently steals women’s health in their most productive years.
Our work focuses on bringing health education and screening directly to women in schools, markets, and underserved communities.
We believe that no woman should suffer or die because she “did not know.”
The fight against kidney disease and NCDs cannot be waged in silos. Nurses, advocates, NGOs, and policymakers must collaborate to put prevention at the center of women’s health.
Only then can we change the story from late detection to early protection.
No woman should lose her life to what she never knew.
Ajobo and Fatima who are founders of The Kings Daughter Foundation, and MedForHer respectively write from Abuja.
