Taiwan Quick Take: Kidney disease high

A recent report by the National Health Research Institute showed that some 1.5 million people in the country suffer from chronic kidney disease, with nearly 90 percent unaware that they have contracted the disease. The report added that Taiwan has the second-highest rate of dialysis treatment in the world after Japan, and that chronic kidney disease is the eighth major cause of death in the country. The report also quoted statistics showing that the chronic kidney disease death rate surged from 11.39 out of 100,000 people in 1980 to 20.7 in 2004. The institute estimated that some 1.5 million sufferers in the country were already in the third to fifth stages of the disease, with 6,000 of them undergoing dialysis treatment.