Lions Centre helps to ease financial burden on liver patients' families

Yeung So-chow had not imagined how big a burden kidney failure could be, until her elderly mother fell ill two years ago.

For many months, the Yeung family had to come up with HK$2,400 each week to pay for kidney dialysis for their mother, Lai Fung-kai, 67.

The family chose haemodialysis for Lai instead of peritoneal dialysis, which is government- subsidised, because they did not want her to suffer as much.

Haemodialysis, which makes use of a machine to cleanse the blood of toxins, is the more effective of the two procedures. Patients on peritoneal dialysis must introduce a fluid through a permanent tube in the abdomen and flush it out three times a day, exposing themselves to the risk of infection because of the tube.

"She had worked so hard to bring up me and my sister. We don't want her to go through such hardships in her old age," Yeung, 47, said.

Lai goes to the Lions Kidney Educational Centre and Research Foundation's dialysis centre in Sham Shui Po twice a week. The procedure costs HK$1,200 each time, almost half the price charged at a private hospital, where she was treated in 2010.