AKI care across Mseleni launches Kidney Care Network in South Africa
As part of the Kidney Care Network (KCN) project, mini acute kidney injury (AKI) trainings ran by ISN reverse fellow Martyn Fredlund took place across rural hospitals in the Northeast region of South Africa throughout June and July 2019. Healthcare workers, among which nurses, doctors, internal medicine residents and medical/nurse graduate students across 10 community health centers were trained.
These training are part of the next phase of the 0by25 initiative, called the Kidney Care Network project, which implements certain interventions identified and proven as impactful by the 0by25 Pilot Feasibility Study into routine clinical care in selected sites in Bolivia, Nepal, Brazil and South Africa. This is done to improve the standard of care in acute kidney injury detection and management in these countries in a way that is appropriate and sustainable in the local setting.
Local experts train all relevant healthcare workers at the sites like in Mseleni, South Africa, using educational materials evaluated as successful in the Pilot Feasibility Project.
“We continue to collect data to measure the impact of this implementation project,” says David Harris, co-lead of the KCN project, ‘this data will be crucial when engaging with local health authorities in the future to seek their support and ensure the interventions proposed become part of normal clinical care in the long term.’ South Africa began collecting data on AKI patients last July and already have 84 AKI patients recorded throughout the region to date.
