Client | Liberia Hospital, Costa Rica
Location | Liberia, Costa Rica
DialOasis has a goal of enabling peritoneal dialysis patients in rural Guanacaste, Costa Rica to complete dialysis therapy at home in order to reduce the load on regional hospitals and improve patient quality of life. The plan to do this is to build a small room like the one pictured in patient homes that has the proper clean environment for dialysis treatment. The project is meaningful because once the solution is implemented, it will allow chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients the freedom to live at home with their families and be somewhat active in their communities. Currently, patients with CKD in that area of the country are unable to perform dialysis at home for sanitation and infrastructure reasons. In order to undergo dialysis four times per day, they must travel to and spend the day at the regional hospital daily, which is a multiple-hour trip for most. As a result, patients are rarely home to interact with their families. If CKD patients could perform dialysis in-home, the burden on public hospitals and other government resources, like ambulances, would decrease. This would not only improve the quality of care for current patients, but could also make available resources to serve unidentified or yet unserved CKD patients in need of dialysis.