In 2009, my dad, Keith Miller, was diagnosed with Renal Failure. since that we have been on a long term rollercoaster trying to stablilise the condition. Nothing is worse than seeing a loved one suffer.

My dad is now post-transplant as of 13th February 2016 after receiving a donor kidney.

The National Kidney Federation is unique because, although there are a large number of kidney charities, the NKF is the national kidney charity actually run by Kidney Patients for Kidney Patients.

Most Renal units have a Kidney patient Association (KPA) specifically attached to that unit, however, in 1978 these independent charities realised that they needed a national organisation to fight their cause as renal provision was in dire difficulties, overstretched, and under resourced. If ever there was a case of post code provision, renal disease was it! Currently there are 69 KPAs and they come together as the controlling Council of the National Kidney Federation, the KPAs are both the ears and the eyes of the NKF and its controlling force. Patients are the Officers of the NKF, the Executive Committee of the NKF and the workforce of the NKF. Apart from six members of staff, all other personnel are either Kidney patients or carers of Kidney patients.

Unlike other kidney charities, the NKF has only two roles campaigning for improvements to renal provision and treatment, and national patient support services.

The NKF wants to forge closer relationships with other kidney charities to ensure that resource is used effectively and that different groups dont keep reinventing the same wheel. A large number of kidney patients come from ethnic backgrounds and this presents separate difficulties which have to be faced, translation of leaflets, involvement in the patient organisations, shortages of donor organs, cultural views toward transplantation.

The Kidney Patient Associations (KPAs) themselves need strengthening and in the coming years the NKF intends to focus on providing real help to these groups of patients who are struggling to maintain their local service within their own units. The renal NSF, when fully published, will require close monitoring to ensure that implementation does take place in a timely and helpful way. The NKF is already structuring itself to take on this responsibility.

The National Kidney Federation is constantly aware that the earlier renal disease can be detected and treated the better the outcome for the patient. Much effort is to be put in, to try to identify these groups at high risk who are unaware of the danger to their health and the possibility of their entering End Stage Renal Failure.

Whilst there clearly have been many advances in renal care since the foundation of the NKF in 1978, it remains true that the period started with a shortage of renal provision and resource and ends in exactly the same plight. The NKF hopes passionately that over the coming years we will see real strides being made in adequate provision and that scientific developments will head off the ten yearly doubling of renal patient numbers currently being predicted. It is very sobering to think that if the NHS is struggling to cope with 42,000 kidney patients today, how will it cope with 80,000 in ten years time?

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