Chronic Kidney Disease in the Developing World

The attention being paid globally to chronic kidney disease is attributable to five factors: the rapid increase in its prevalence, the enormous cost of treatment, recent data indicating that overt disease is the tip of an iceberg of covert disease, an appreciation of its major role in increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, and the discovery of effective measures to prevent its progression. These factors render chronic kidney disease an important focus of health care planning even in the developed world, but the problems they delineate in the developing world are far more challenging. Some 85 percent of the world's . . .