A world perspective on renal care: the challenges of prevention and treatment

It is a special privilege to address the renal care professionals who so skilfully carry out renal replacement treatment in all the countries of the European Union. Approximately one million people a year die from renal diseases. There are currently 1,065,000 people on haemodialysis worldwide. Ninety percent of them live in North America, Japan and Europe, whose population is less than 20% of the world's total. What this tells us is that dialysis isn't available in developing countries, as one could expect that the number of both pre-dialysis patients and those needing dialysis would be about the same in the developed and developing world.