Kidney care is inadequate in many regions of the world mostly because the burden of that care falls almost exclusively on nephrologists, and low- and middle-income countries simply don't have enough of these specialists to provide the care their populations need, a new survey of the global nephrology workforce indicates.
"With increasing rates of diabetes and hypertension — key factors leading to kidney disease — we need to understand the [nature of] the nephrology workforce and the disparities that exist. And a study like this can help us better understand this, so we can better tackle the burden of kidney disease not only in Western countries but also worldwide," lead author Stephen Sozio, MD, associate professor of medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, told Medscape Medical News.
"In particular, we wanted to identify some of the regional challenges in our kidney care specialty, but we also needed to identify what kidney services look like across different economies and health systems, and hopefully with that data, identify some of the deficits in core policies to try and ensure that there is adequate kidney care across populations," he added.
Co-author Kurtis Pivert of the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) agreed, adding that "providing adequate kidney care to 850 million people across the world" is "a wicked problem," a real challenge.
