Renal Disease in Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups

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