Dialysis skills

An international campaign to prevent kidney-related deaths in Africa, Saving Young Lives, has been building capacity among African doctors and nurses in the management of Acute Kidney Injury(AKI), with a focus on practical skills in settings with limited resources.

A “hands-on” one-week training course run by University of Cape Town (UCT’s) Institute of Child Health, based at Red Cross Memorial Children’s Hospital, exposes participants to the management of children with acute kidney injury -  including vascular access, insertion of peritoneal dialysis catheters and paediatric life support. In the three years since it began, 400 lives have been saved by peritoneal dialysis – a technique that can be applied in low resource settings by medical staff with low cost/improvised equipment.

Gastroenteritis, malaria, and sepsis in Africa has resulted in death for millions of African children and adults with AKI without prompt treatment and dialysis due to poor resources in many regions of the continent.

To date, over 100 health practitioners have been trained - in teams comprising of doctors and nurses from all parts of Africa, including Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mocambique, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia and Benin. This year’s has the biggest attendance with 36 candidates participating.

Participants learning resuscitation skills                                            Participants learning Peritoneal Dialysis skills

“This is an amazing course that builds capacity in paediatric resuscitation and paediatric nephrology. There is increasing demand for this training, with participants for this year’s course coming from 12 African countries,” says Head of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health Professor Heather Zar.

“It brings much recognition to Red Cross Memorial Children’s Hospital and to the Department of Paediatrics and to Paediatric Surgery at UCT, as an African and international training centre for sick children.”

These teams will then return to their centres and implement their training as well as start an education program to promote their newly acquired knowledge locally, says Prof Mignon McCullloch, who with colleague Professor Alp Numanoglu, successfully organise the annual conference.

Saving Young Lives is a collaborative group between the International Society of Nephrology(ISN), International Paediatric Nephrology Association(IPNA), International Peritoneal Dialysis Association(ISPD) and EuroPD which is supporting 15 centres across Africa in terms of education and consumables enabling the treatment of AKI.

Saving Young Lives participants