Yannick Nlandu

How did the ISN enable you to advance kidney health in your home country?

Since 2015, the ISN has been involved in the training of Congolese physicians through the ISN Educational Ambassadors program, supporting the first international nephrology course in Kinshasa in 2015 and the first congress of the Société Congolaise de Néphrologie in August 2023. The ISN Fellowship Program allowed me to introduce the use of lung ultrasound to assess dry weight in chronic haemodialysis patients and haemodialysis catheter placement in nephrology training, to increase collaboration with other nephrologists around the world, and to write several manuscripts focusing on advocacy for kidney disease, including “Assessing the Potential and Necessity for Kidney Transplantation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo”; “COVID-19 and Kidney Disease: Progress in Health Inequity from Low-Income Settings”; “Disparities in Access to Kidney Transplantation in Developing Countries”; “Access to Nephrology Care for Pregnancy-Related Acute Kidney Injury in Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries: A Perspective”.

By participating in the activities of the Young Nephrologists Committee and the Social Media Team, ISN gave me the organizational skills to organize the 1st Congress of the Congolese Society of Nephrology. ISN also enabled me to contribute to the 3rd edition of the Global Kidney Health Atlas, giving me access to the data from this international survey and the opportunity to write two articles (“Capacity for the management of kidney failure in Africa: Report from the 2023 ISN-GKHA study” and “Health systems capacity for detection, monitoring and management of acute kidney injury in world countries and regions”) as a co-author, giving me a better understanding of the disparities between different regions in terms of kidney health.

What does the future look like?

The future looks bright, with a growing interest among young Congolese nephrologists in the various programmes offered by the ISN; a greater commitment to improving renal health in the DRC, with a real desire to create the first haemodialysis register in the DRC; continued efforts to pool the purchase of dialysis consumables to reduce costs; and the adoption of the law on kidney transplantation by the Congolese parliament.