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Dear IPNA Members and Friends,
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold around the world, I am sure all of us are grappling with its impact on clinical care, and are closely monitoring local, regional and international developments to better inform our decisions. Especially in times like these, it is vital for us to come together as a community and share our knowledge and experiences, in order to improve our clinical decisions and processes, and thus patient outcomes. Additionally, it is important to develop workflows that will help our healthcare workers remain safe in a very trying environment.
To this end, IPNA will be forming a COVID-19 pandemic workgroup, which will focus on developing an interactive resource to facilitate knowledge sharing in our community. More details will be available shortly, and we look forward to your participation and contributions.
These are difficult times for all of us, both as doctors as well as individuals. Let us support one another and fight shoulder to shoulder, so that even now, we can continue to provide great care for little kidneys, everywhere.
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With my best regards,
Hui Kim Yap
IPNA President
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Free access to all educational materials on IPNA Website
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Pediatric Nephrology in Nepal
Dr. Shankar Yadav is the active member of IPNA. In his latest contribution he summarizes the progress in Pediatric Nephrology care in Nepal.
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 Interview with Dr. Frederick Kaskel
Dr Frederick Kaskel is a past president of the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology, was Congress President of the International Pediatric Nephrology Association 15th Scientific Meeting in New York and he also chaired History and Archives Committee of IPNA for many years.
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What is your IPNA Membership experience?
We are truly thankful for the IPNA assistance given to our teaching courses. The Philippines is composed of several islands and kidney advocates from the Northern to Southern islands converge every year to get an update from our IPNA supported courses and spreads it to their own areas thereafter. We also would like to thank IPNA for the immediate response to queries , quick replies and assistance.
AGNES ALARILLA ALBA, MD, Pediatric Nephrologist in Philippines
I very appreciate all initiatives taken by IPNA for spreading the knowledge in recent advancements and best clinical practices in pediatric nephrology globally, especially for sharing the material of the last IPNA Congress, giving the access to the Pediatric Nephrology journal and recently implemented IPNA webinars, all of which are of a great help for us, pediatric nephrologists from Kazakhstan. It helps us to stay up-to-date and deliver better management in our daily clinical practices.
Marina Khvan, MD, Pediatric Nephrologist, Kazakhstan
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Saving Young Lives in Cape Town
The first SYL course in 2020 took place in February at Red Cross War Memorial Hospital in Cape Town with Mignon McCulloch as course director. The full week intensive program included both lessons and practices, such as peritoneal dialysis and inserting PD catheters in children. More than 15 pairs of doctors and nurses from 11 African countries attended the course.
Later this year, the SYL project will continue with courses in Senegal and Asia.
The Saving Young Lives Program (SYL) aims to develop sustainable peritoneal dialysis (PD) programs to treat patients with Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in low resource settings.
The project is now in its second phase and is self-financed through an agreement of IPNA, ISN, ISPD and EuroPD.
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Covid-19 and Pediatric Nephrology
Although it is too early of a stage to know the real impact of Covid-19 on children, a few reports and guides have already been published.
Dr. Dean Wallace has produced patient guidance about Covid-19 for children on dialysis and those requiring immunosuppression. Follow the link to read the guidance. Please note that advice on self-isolating is changing rapidly: keep updated from Renal Association.
ERKNet Survey: COVID-19 in Children with Kidney Disease on Immunosuppressant Medication
There is a general lack of knowledge regarding the risk of Covid-19 in children on immunosuppressant medication. In view of this, ERKNet would like to start gathering information on cases of Covid-19 in children on immunosuppressant medication from the global paediatric nephrology community.
Please take 10-15 min to fill in the survey under this link.
Prof. Hong Xu from China and her team wrote an excellent article on China's pediatric nephrology experience in the Covid 19 pandemic. Follow the link below to read the full article.
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Since our Educational Programs portfolio is growing, we have decided to publish 2 extra issues of the IPNA Newsletter per year called IPNA Education. As the title shows, the issue will be focused on our Educational Programs. The first issue will be sent to our members in June.
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IPNA Teams with Bridge of Life International to Provide Screening of More than 300 Children in Guatemala
During March, IPNA teamed with the Bridge of Life (BOL) organization to screen 300 plus children at risk for chronic kidney disease (CKD). The screening took place during March 8-15, 2020 in schools in the La Democracia municipality of Guatemala.
The program, organized locally by FUNDANIER, included prevention education for children ages 11 to 14 years old. The BOL nurses, dieticians and IPNA volunteer pediatric nephrologist trained local community health workers and doctors about chronic kidney disease prevention, generated awareness and celebrated World Kidney Day.
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Ongoing Applications
Due to the current situation with Covid-19 and its unpredictable development over the next weeks, we have decided to extend the deadline for the Fellowship and Sister Center applications to May, 1.
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FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
This important IPNA program designed to bring nephrology care to regions, where it is limited or non-existent, provides the fellow professional/hands on training in pediatric nephrology at IPNA training centers around the world.
Criteria, important documents and the online application can be found on the IPNA website.
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SISTER CENTER PROGRAM
The program´s aim is to link developing pediatric renal units in less resourced regions (emerging center) to experienced pediatric renal units in well resourced regions (supporting center) on a 1 to 1 basis.
For criteria and online application, please visit the IPNA website.
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WORLD KIDNEY DAY 2020
Around the world, 1220 World Kidney Day activities were pinned to the WKD official event map! "Kidney Health for Everyone Everywhere – from Prevention to Detection and Equitable Access to Care" was the topic of the 2020 campaign.
IPNA joins the campaign every year with its own project contest and financial support. All received applications, in total 18, were high-quality projects and we had a difficulty to choose only one winner and therefore for the first time in our history, we have decided to award two winners, i.e. projects in Dhaka/Bangladesh and Bhopal/India. The report about these two projects will be included in Education Newsletter issue in June. You can read about other projects commemorating the World Kidney Day.
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Events and Congress in 2020
The impact of the Covid-19 on the congresses and other events is tremendous and most of meetings are cancelled. For the latest list of the upcoming events please visit our website.
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 Dr. Demetrius Ellis has been a leading clinician and teacher of pediatric nephrology. During his career spanning over four decades he has inspired many medical students to pursue a career in his beloved specialty and has mentored many fellows and younger nephrology faculty. In this autobiography of his career, he shares many unique patient anecdotes that are informative, enjoyable and impactful. These encounters also served to formulate several tenets that are very relevant to revitalizing the nephrology specialty. More importantly, application of these principles has the potential of maximizing patient outcomes while enriching the professional and personal lives of nephrologists.
Reflections of "Nephron Man": A Road Map for Revitalizing the Medical Profession by Demetrius Ellis
Follow this link to purchase the book.
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Become an IPNA contributor!
Do you have any interesting news in the field of Pediatric Nephrology? Have you participated in an IPNA Teaching Course, are you doing the fellowship programme or have you recently visited an interesting workshop or congress? Contact Lucie from the IPNA Office at office@ipna-online.org
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IPNA Administrative Office
E-mail: office@ipna-online.org
Address: C-IN, 5.kvetna 65, Prague Congress Centre, 140 21, Prague 4, Czech Republic
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