Turks and Caicos Poker Run a lifeline for Kidney patients!

#TurksandCaicos, June 25, 2024 – “The Poker Run is a Godsend, the greatest group of men and women you can find. These guys are a blessing to the Kidney Foundation. We get a donation from them every year and we look forward to that and if they don’t show up, we are in trouble,” Rueben Hall President of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) Kidney Foundation declared recently.

Come the weekend of July 26-28, the Turks and Caicos Boat Club will host its 10^th Annual Poker Run and again the Kidney Foundation along with the Turks and Caicos Diabetic Association and Abuse Awareness Turks and Caicos will be this year’s beneficiaries.

The Poker Run which starts at Haven Down Rock Marina with usually four stops along the way before the grand finale at the Turtle Cove Marina, offers up $30,000 in prizes.

When Hall joined the organization 10 years ago, now having served as president for the past eight years, there were only 21 dialysis patients but that number has more than doubled and is now at 55.

When the kidneys no longer work properly, dialysis is used to try to achieve balance by imitating the fluid and toxin removal functions of healthy kidneys. But for many kidney patients, treatment three times per week may not be enough and this can put stress on their hearts. This makes the work of the Kidney Foundation especially vital as it seeks to cater to the social well-being of affected patients, many of whom cannot hold a steady job, having to undergo dialysis treatment as many as three times a week. The procedure lasts for three hours or more and is physically demanding, with the patient usually exhausted by the process.

While the government provides some support by providing airfare for individuals who must travel outside the Turks and Caicos in order to access dialysis treatment, the money needed for food and a place to stay is usually not covered.  There is no provision for caregivers, usually only one person’s airfare is covered and this makes it unattractive even for relatives to come onboard for the trip which is usually to Jamaica or the Dominican Republic, for a week at least.

Helping to cover these costs is where most of the Kidney Foundation funds are directed; but as the financial demand grows there are no additional sources of income, even as the recurrent costs grow. These include the provision of gift baskets, greeting cards and money.

“At Christmas time we do something special for all the patients because many of them are lonely people as most do not have families. During the Christmas we’ll have dinner for them, give them gifts, a card and sometimes some money. Ninety-five per cent of them are not working because they can’t hold down a steady job, so people won’t hire them,” Hall lamented.

He again appealed to the private sector to support the Kidney Foundation and other such worthy causes.

“The cost is becoming more and more every year because you get and more people going away almost every month for treatment and that’s where the bulk of the assistance that we receive goes and we have other expenses that we deal with as well.”

This includes the observance of World Kidney Day which is celebrated globally every second Tuesday of March with activities such as health screenings and education campaigns, all geared to promoting kidney health.

The TCI Kidney Foundation uses the observance to share messages with school children and educators which promote the need to develop and maintain healthful eating habits from early on in order to avoid lifestyles which often lead to lifestyle diseases.

Getting the buy-in of corporate Turks and Caicos is critical to the future of the country’s population because of the need for a comprehensive sustained public awareness campaign to help low-income families to understand that kidney damage most times can be traced to poor food choices started in childhood.

“Getting them to understand that message is at the core of our public awareness and treatment of the disease,” Hall explained.

“We have a very poor diet system here, so 99.9 per cent of the people on dialysis are in the low-income class because they are forced to eat certain things since eating health is so expensive. So we try to educate persons not to feed the children certain kinds of food so we say to people, ‘Try and avoid smoking, avoid drinking too much alcohol and cut down on the salt in your diet’ and we try to educate our children in the school setting.”