Renal Disease in Racial and Ethnic
Minority Groups
Official Satellite Conference to the 2001 World Congress of Nephrology
October 18-20, 2001
Welcome
On behalf of the organizing committee, I take great pleasure in inviting you to join us
at Santa Fe in what promises to be a unique and exciting conference. I think that all of
us are aware of the epidemic of progressive renal disease that is causing such devastation
amongst indigenous peoples and in the developing nations of the world. It remains
unfortunate that we have no available cures for this problem, since our understanding of
the disease mechanisms at work and the factors that trigger them is as yet imperfect. Such
treatments that we are able to offer, for instance: therapeutic agents, dialysis, renal
transplantation, are difficult to put into practice, largely because of the glaring
maldistribution of available resources
As this burden of renal disease is also prominent among the native people of the
American southwest, it is timely and appropriate that we should come together in Santa Fe,
New Mexico, just a couple of hours flying time from San Francisco, in order to examine
these worldwide problems in a seamless fashion, and from our deliberations build a
consensus view as to the best means of tackling them both now and in the future.
The oral presentations at this meeting, comprising a series of papers delivered by a
panel of invited speakers drawn from around the world, will be given in plenary session
throughout. Free communications will be exhibited as posters and should be submitted as
abstracts in the first instance. Those selected will be displayed at the Eldorado
hotel for the duration of the meeting, in an area adjacent close to the conference hall
and adjacent to the area where lunch and coffee breaks will be taken
We encourage those of you who are presenting posters at the World Congress of
Nephrology that relate to the topic of Renal Disease in Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups
to resubmit your abstracts to us (for administrative reasons), so that your posters can be
processed for exhibition at this meeting.
I would like to stress that the lifeblood of this conference can only flow from the
multi-directional sharing of information between those practicing on the front lines of
renal disease in the developing world, those working at the cutting edge of medical and
scientific research, members of the pharmaceutical industry, and those agencies and
governments whose task it is to fund the treatment and research programmes that will
ultimately lead to the resolution of these problem. The matter is urgent! There is no time
to be lost! See you in Santa Fe!
David Pugsley,
Program Director |