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During the congress, E-Posters will be accessible to all participants on the congress website 24/7, as well as in the E-poster stations in the congress center.
Preparing your E-Poster
Please review the E-Poster format requirements carefully when preparing your E-Poster. Should your E-Poster not meet the mentioned requirements, it may not be displayed as described above.
E-Poster Submission Deadline
Please prepare and upload your E-Poster no later than March 14, 2026 11.59PM CET. After this date, you will no longer be able to prepare and upload your E-poster and it will not be displayed and accessible on the congress website.
Please follow the instructions below to input your abstract title.
Abstract titles should be brief and reflect the content of the abstract.
The prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and its most advanced form, kidney failure, are rapidly increasing in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, equitable access to kidney replacement therapy to manage kidney failure are lacking in the region, and there is very limited data on survival outcomes among those that manage to access treatment. The Dialysis in Zimbabwe (DIAZ) project was designed to collect and report on prevalence and outcomes of dialysis patients in Zimbabwe. This analysis reports on the survival and other clinical outcomes of prevalent dialysis patients in Zimbabwe.
The DIAZ project was a prospective observational cohort study that aimed to enrol all prevalent adult patients receiving dialysis in public or private facilities in Zimbabwe as of February 2018. Patients receiving maintenance in-centre haemodialysis (HD) or home-based peritoneal dialysis (PD) were approached for participation over a 4-week period. All participants provided written consent. A custom-designed questionnaire was administered by study staff in February 2018, with questions directed at participants and additional data collected through medical record review. Subsequent follow-up questionnaires were administered at 3, 6, 12 and 24 months to determine survival and dialysis status. The primary outcome of this analysis was survival, assessed using Kaplan-Meier analyses. Factors associated with mortality were examined using Cox proportional hazards models.
A total of 482 prevalent dialysis patients were identified across 16 dialysis units in February 2018 (HD = 457 patients, PD = 25 patients). Of these, 367 patients (HD = 354 patients, PD = 13 patients) consented to participate in the DIAZ project for baseline data collection and follow-up, representing 76% of Zimbabwe’s prevalent dialysis population. Patients were young (mean age 53.1 years), male (65.7%), with a short dialysis vintage (median 1.7 years) and high rates of hypertension (88.6%) and diabetes (37.9%). A total of 137 (37.3%) died within the 24 month follow-up period, 10 patients (2.7%) had recovery of renal function sufficient to cease dialysis and 5 patients (1.4%) underwent kidney transplantation.
The 1-year overall survival was 81.5% (95% confidence interval (CI) 77.5-85.7) and 2-year survival was 58.7% (95% CI 53.4-64.4) shown in Figure 1. Patients with a dialysis vintage >2yrs at baseline had a lower hazard of mortality in both univariate (unadjusted HR 0.66, 95% CI 0.47-0.92) and multivariate analyses (adjusted HR 0.58, 95% CI 0.41-0.83). HIV positive status was associated with a higher hazard of mortality (adjusted HR 1.60, 95% CI 1.01-2.53) in multivariate analysis. Known diabetes was associated with a higher unadjusted hazard of mortality (unadjusted HR 1.46, 95% CI 1.04-2.04); however this association was no longer present in multivariate analysis.
Survival of prevalent dialysis patients in Zimbabwe is broadly similar to other dialysis cohorts in SSA but remains significantly lower than in high-income settings. The high HIV prevalence appears to play a part in this mortality. The paradoxical greater survival of patients with a longer dialysis history may be related to greater access to medical and financial support. Further work is needed to understand drivers of poor survival and to inform strategies to improve these outcomes.
