Introduction:
We are engaged in organizational and educational activities to promote renal failure and dialysis care in developing countries, and we also accept doctors and dialysis staff from developing countries for training. We will introduce our efforts for overseas dispatch and in-country training, and discuss the current status and problems of medical assistance to developing countries.
Methods:
At Osaka Metropolitan University, nine people (eight doctors and two clinical engineers) have participated in NGO UBPI (NGO Ubiquitous Blood Purification International) activities since 2015, providing medical support such as lectures on dialysis treatment, surgical support, and dialysis fluid purification. Although there are cases of self-financing, basically they are treated as business trips from the university. In addition, since 2016, he has been accepting trainees in the Osaka area as part of the activities of the Subcommittee for Dialysis Staff Development Programs in Developing Countries, which belongs to the General Affairs Committee of the Japanese Society for Dialysis Therapy.
Results:
Over the past 10 years, academic support activities have been conducted in five countries: Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar (with Japan International Cooperation Agency activities), and Vietnam. Specific activities include donation of ETRF to dialysis facilities, teaching of dialysis fluid cleaning techniques, hands-on seminars such as echocardiography, teaching of vascular access (VA) surgery (Cambodia, Vietnam, Mongolia), lectures on renal failure, and support for the establishment of academic societies. World Kidney Day was held for the public. In Cambodia, he has participated in the Japanese Assistance Council of establishing Dialysis specialists System in Cambodia (JAC-DSC) seminar seven times, and in Mongolia, he has participated in the Joint Seminar of Mongolia has participated in the Joint Seminar of Mongolia and Japan on Hemodialysis Technology and Treatment Advances five times. As for training programs, the Center has accepted physicians and medical staff from five countries (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, and Indonesia) to attend lectures and observe surgical procedures.
Conclusions:
In order to conduct sustainable medical assistance and academic activities, it was considered important to have appropriate counterparts in the host country. It was also considered important to combine the activities of various organizations. As for vascular access, vascular access intervention therapy such as percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) has not been widely used, and once the VA is occluded, the next step is reconstruction. Therefore, once the VA was occluded, the next step was reconstructive surgery, which often required highly skilled vascular access surgery. In addition, collaboration among various departments was poor, and in many cases, hybrid treatment of surgical and IVR procedures was difficult. A more fundamental problem is the need to create a system that allows insurance reimbursement for PTA as soon as possible in developing countries. In addition, when accepting trainees, it was considered essential to have a logistician in charge of coordinating the training. We would like to continue our overseas support in the future.
I have no potential conflict of interest to disclose.
I did not use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process.