Kinshasa, April 9th, 2025 (CPA) – The main causes of acute renal failure (ARF) in children are still dominated by infections at the Kinshasa University Clinics (CUK), in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a health source told us on Wednesday. ‘The epidemiological data available at the CUK show that the main causes of acute renal failure in children are still dominated by infections, in particular malaria, which is often poorly treated, generalised infection (bacterial sepsis) and diarrhoea,’ said Professor Dr Pepe Ekulu, Head of Paediatric Nephrology at the Cliniques Universitaires de Kinshasa (CUK). ‘All these illnesses can be accompanied by dehydration, which in turn will aggravate acute renal failure, the treatment of which is costly for families’, he explained.
With regard to a report circulating on social networks to the effect that the CUK are seeing an increase in the number of children undergoing dialysis because of ‘plastic juice’, this nephrologist pointed out that this is false and that no studies have been carried out on the subject. ‘As for the question of whether the coloring in the juice is harmful to health, it’s not true, we can neither confirm nor affirm it, we haven’t carried out any studies on this. It’s up to the Congolese Control Office (OCC) to identify the constituents of this juice and respond to the public’, he added. ‘We have to give the right information. As far as we’re concerned, every day there are more and more cases of acute renal failure, most of which is due to poorly treated malaria’, he said.
He explained that his department sees all children under the age of 14, even newborn babies. ‘Last year, we had 10 newborns, which was not the juice, but rather the conditions in the maternity wards where they are born, or where there are not all the necessary conditions,’ he said. Professor Ekulu also recommended prevention as the best way of avoiding ARF, namely: to avoid systematic use of anti-inflammatory drugs in all cases of fever in children; to use paracetamol instead; to avoid giving antibiotics to children without the advice of qualified nursing staff; to only give children drugs prescribed by qualified nursing staff; and to give children plenty of water to drink during fever or diarrhoea. Acute renal failure is the pathological state resulting from a sudden drop in glomerular filtration rate, retention of nitrogenous waste and oliguria, which is frequent but not obligatory, according to experts.