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WKD T-shirts produced by the NST as part of World Kidney Day 2021 Activities

Continuing ISN’s current focus on presenting Collective-Member Societies in the ISN Oceania and South East Asia region, we spoke to Worawon Chailimpamontree, chair of the CKD prevention subcommittee, the Nephrology Society of Thailand (NST), about celebrating World Kidney Day (WKD) and their ongoing involvement in developing initiatives to lower salt intake in Thailand.

To mark WKD, the NST joined forces with the Thai Lowsalt Network, the National Health Security Office (NHSO), and the Ministry of Public Health. The organizations created a series of video presentations for chronic kidney disease patients on the benefits of treatment, medication, and exercise for patients with chronic kidney disease, and depicting the lifestyle of patients currently on hemodialysis and continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD).

The NST also used print and social media channels to promote the event, as well as celebrity endorsements via Instagram. They created a logo, sticker series, and WKD T-shirts for distribution by hospitals and health care centers to promote the campaign.

Key nephrologists, nurses, and dietitians were interviewed on national and cable television in the week leading up to WKD. These broadcasts promoted the WKD campaign, presenting an overview of CKD and highlighting the need to raise public awareness and the importance of diet and nutrition for kidney disease patients.

On WKD itself, March 11, 2021, the NST broadcast a live event through Facebook. The NST president opened the ceremony, which included seminars on “Living well with kidney disease” and “Treatment benefits for patients with chronic kidney disease.” A celebrity chef demonstrated recipes for CKD patients.

One of NST’s most notable achievements is creating the Thai Lowsalt Network. The project was developed alongside the Royal College of Physicians, civil society, the Institute of Food Product and Development, Kasetsart University, and the Ministry of Public Health.

Thanks to strong support from the WHO and the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, the low salt campaign “Reducing salt intake for prevention of non-communicable diseases” has run for the past eight years. Recent campaign achievements include:

• Developing a network for the development and reformulation of salt-reduced foods.
• Establishing low salt communities and low salt hospitals across the
• Inventing a salt meter to measure sodium content more accurately in Thai food, which was distributed to health care workers and village health
• Developing a database for monitoring sodium levels in food products.
• Conducting the first national population-based survey to estimate dietary sodium intake in Thailand by using 24-hour urine collections.

The NST joined the ISN as a Collective Member Society in March 2021.