title: A world perspective on renal care: the challenges of prevention and treatment.
abstract: It is a special privilege to address the renal care professionals who so skilfully carry out renal replacement treatment in all the countries of the European Union. Approximately one million people a year die from renal diseases. There are currently 1,065,000 people on haemodialysis worldwide. Ninety percent of them live in North America, Japan and Europe, whose population is less than 20% of the world's total. What this tells us is that dialysis isn't available in developing countries, as one could expect that the number of both pre-dialysis patients and those needing dialysis would be about the same in the developed and developing world.
authors.affiliation: Massey College, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dirks
mesh_terms: D017281:Cost of Illness; D003906:Developing Countries; D014943:Global Health; D006292:Health Priorities; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D007390:International Agencies / Q000458:organization & administration; D007393:International Educational Exchange; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy*; D009398:Nephrology / Q000193:education / Q000458:organization & administration*; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D011322:Primary Prevention / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017582:Renal Replacement Therapy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data