National Kidney Foundation Issues Call to Action on “World Kidney Day”
In recognition of the worldwide significance of kidney disease as a public health problem, the 3rd annual “World Kidney Day” will be observed on March 13, 2008, the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) announced today. The foundation will lead U.S. activities for World Kidney Day designed to build kidney disease awareness, educate those at risk about the importance of early detection and the critical role the kidneys play in maintaining overall health.
To make early detection of chronic kidney disease (CKD) as easy as possible, the foundation is offering free screenings on March 13 in more than 25 cities around the country. The Kidney Early Evaluation Program, or KEEP, screenings are especially designed to find kidney disease early and its treatment recommendations for every stage of the disease improve the outcome of care for those who have kidney disease.
“Most individuals with kidney disease are not diagnosed until late in the course of illness when there are few opportunities for preventive interventions. We need to alert the public and health policy makers to this real threat to populations here in the U.S. and around the world and to the fact that early detection can make a difference,” says Dr. Allan J. Collins, NKF President and Chairman of the World Kidney Day Steering Committee.
World Kidney Day efforts will be coordinated globally by the International Federation of Kidney Foundations (IFKF) and the International Society of Nephrology (ISN), with the anticipated participation of more than 60 countries worldwide. The overall goal of this observance is spreading the crucial message that kidney disease is common, harmful and treatable.
Kidney disease is common because chronic kidney disease defined as a filtering capacity or function of an estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate of less than 60ml/min/1.73m2 (less than about 60% of normal).and/or the presence of persistent microalbuminuria or proteinuria, or protein in the urine, has now been consistently shown to affect about 10-13% of the adult population in studies of different races living on different continents worldwide. According to investigators at Johns Hopkins and Tufts-New England Medical Center, a recently-published study based on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimated that there are 26,000,000 adults with evidence of kidney disease in the United States alone and most are completely unaware of their condition. This number increases the most recent estimates of the rate of chronic kidney disease (CKD) by 30%, from 10% of the U.S. population (1988-1994) to 13.1% (1999-2004).
“Kidney disease is a multiplier of increased risk for adverse heart and blood vessel events and cost.These facts place kidney disease as a worldwide problem with a similar impact in the U.S. and other countries,” says Collins.
The harmful aspect of kidney disease will be emphasizednot just because some patients progress to end stage renal disease (ESRD), but more because these kidney abnormalities are associated with a many-fold increase in risk of cardiovascular complications and premature cardiovascular death.
World Kidney Day public education initiatives will highlight kidney disease as treatable because there is now strong scientific evidence that early detection, altering lifestyle factors and aggressively controlling blood pressure, can not only slow or halt the progression of patients with CKD to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) but can also significantly reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease that leads to premature death in the majority of these patients.
The National Kidney Foundation will also offer free kidney screenings to people at risk for CKD in a number of cities across the U.S. on World Kidney Day, March 13. For locations and schedules, click here.
The National Kidney Foundation would like to thank the following sponsors for their support of World Kidney Day activities in the United States.
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