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The National Kidney Foundation Samoa (NKFS) plays an important role in increasing awareness of chronic kidney disease in Samoa. As part of World Kidney Day 2019, the NKFS ran a successful month-long community screening campaign for chronic kidney disease (CKD). The survey results were analyzed by Dr. Malama Tafuna’i’, a doctor at the ISN SRC Emerging Center in Samoa, and recently published in BMJ Open.  

Read the study here. 

This study was part of a larger project assessing CKD prevalence in Samoans living in Samoa and Auckland, New Zealand. Dr. Tafuna’i’s paper on the prevalence of CKD in Samoans living in Auckland was recently promoted by the WHO’s external relations officer and by its Noncommunicable Diseases Management-Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment Unit head, Dr. Slim Slama, who stated at the ISN’s 2022 Oceania-focused Global Kidney Policy Forum, ‘kidney disease is…one of the greatest sources of catastrophic expenditure and impoverishment in the population living with chronic conditions.’ 

This is the first study to report the estimated prevalence of CKD in Samoa, which is much higher than for most countries around the world and reveals an urgent need for further studies of its epidemiology in Samoa as well as prevention strategies.