Las Vegas, NV — April 28, 2011: The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) (www.kidney.org) and PUMC Pharmaceutical (PUMC) announced today an educational initiative to implement KDIGO clinical practice guidelines in China. This NKF-PUMC educational partnership has selected KDIGO’s CKD-MBD guideline as their first implementation project in China, with others to follow.
A kickoff meeting co-hosted by NKF and PUMC in Shanghai on March 12 officially launched this long-term partnership, and gathered together China’s key opinion leaders for a day of program design, task delegation, and training.
China’s rapid economic expansion is fueling an increasing incidence of CKD. There are an estimated 165 million CKD patients in China, with 4.6 million in Stages 3-5. Not only is China’s CKD population the world’s largest, but it is also unique. Whereas in the U.S., diabetes is the leading cause of CKD, in China, glomerulonephritis accounts for up to 50% of CKD cases.
Insufficient physician and patient education, outdated diagnostics and therapeutics, and high treatment costs all contribute to a low treatment rate of below 10%. However, economic expansion and income growth are slowly improving this ratio. There is sharp growth in the number of dialysis centers, all hospital-based, across China. In Shanghai, for example, the number of centers has been growing at over 10% a year since the late 1990’s.
The NKF-PUMC educational partnership will focus on upgrading the performance of China’s dialysis centers by working closely with key opinion leaders on physician education. Appointed NKF Ambassadors in each of China’s largest metropolitan centers will be trained in the utilization of KDIGO guidelines. In turn, the NKF Ambassadors will train nephrologists and dialysis center directors in smaller cities. Regular monitoring of dialysis centers will measure the effectiveness of guideline implementation in improving patient outcomes. This “train the trainer” network approach will enable the NKF-PUMC partnership to maximize the reach of KDIGO’s guidelines in China, in the shortest amount of time.
“The scale and severity of the CKD challenge in China is daunting, so we are excited to be working with PUMC Pharmaceutical on improving the quality of care across the country,” said John Davis, CEO of NKF. “The implementation program we have launched in China is the most robust of its kind, and will also gather the unique data to ensure KDIGO’s guidelines are more truly global.”
“We are proud to bring together NKF and the leaders in China’s nephrology community,” said Raymond Su, CEO of PUMC Pharmaceutical. “NKF is acknowledged by China’s leading nephrologists as a key authority on CKD clinical practice, and we are proud to assist in the cultivation of KDIGO’s presence here. Our joint educational partnership will support our mission to improve the lives of the millions of China’s CKD patients and their families.”
PUMC Pharmaceutical is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on meeting the unmet medical needs of patients in China. The company was originally established as a joint venture with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and takes its name from Peking Union Medical College, founded by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1917.
The National Kidney Foundation is the United States' largest voluntary agency dedicated to preventing and treating kidney diseases, improving the health and well-being of individuals and families affected by these diseases, and increasing the availability of all organs for transplantation. Visit www.kidney.org for more information.
