PEDIATRIC NEPHROLOGY IN COUNTRIES WITH LIMITED RESOURCES

This paper summarises a symposium concerned with the provision of care for children with kidney disease in developing countries. Better orga nisation of services is required to prevent waste of resources, with t he emphasis on team work between professionals, shared care with local health care personnel remote from the paediatric nephrology unit and good communications. Families need to be educated and provided with ap propriate information so that they can care for their child at home. T echnology should be simple and robust and the staff using it should be fully trained to maintain it in use. Therapies should be definitive w here possible, because long-term supervision of treatment is often dif ficult. Effective but inexpensive medications should be used where pos sible. Twinning of developing and richer countries is valuable to tran sfer technology, help with training and assist in care through the dev elopment of personal contacts.