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Speech delivered at the Annual Dinner of the
Hong Kong Society of Nephrology on the 25th Anniversary
28 November 2004 by Dr. C.H. Leong
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by
Dr C H Leong
President, Hong Kong Academy of Medicine
May I begin by congratulating the successive councils of the HK Society of Nephrology and the members for their perseverance in promoting the necessary and good work of nephrology services in Hong Kong for some 25 years. For as of today, nephrology is not only an established specialty in HK but perhaps one of the most, if not the most, effective specialty in medicine.
The history of the development of the HK society of Nephrology is the history and development of the specialty in Hong Kong. It also reflects some of the changing health care scene in Hong Kong during those times.
Few would not agree that it was the discovery of dialysis that gave life to nephrology – keeping patients alive for investigations, for research, or perhaps to await recovery of renal functions. The Hong Kong Society of Nephrology was established during the infancy of dialysis is Hong Kong. It was the enthusiasm of the Society and her then few members that were responsible in the main way for pushing the then Medical and Health Department to agree to start on a rudimentary chronic dialysis programme – beginning with 2 Drake Willock machines dialyzing patients on a home built Kill board dialysers in the surgical department of QMH. Dialysis has since then advanced by leap and bounds and never look back.
The need for dialysis to maintain the lifes of end stage renal failure patients, yet the paucity of public funds stimulated the Society to campaign for the establishment of a HK Kidney Foundation with the principle purposes to promote awareness of kidney disease and to provide affordable, maximum self help haemodialysis. With the enthusiasm of members of the Society, home dialysis programme was also promulgated.
The breakthrough must be the successful renal transplantation in 1969. The Society was fully aware that success in transplantation depend very much on the availability of donors, in particular cadaveric donors. The Society therefore spearheaded the introduction of a kidney, and subsequently, organ donation card and began a multidirectional organ donation campaign.
Kidney transplantation is today, as we all know, no more an experimental procedure but a well established treatment protocol. With the use of living related donors, beating heart cadavers, better perfusion solutions and the availability of the state of the art antirejection therapeutic agents, nephrology has acquired an added life. With this added life, comes added responsibilities to members of the HK Nephrology Society. Not only are they the hub to manage patients pre and post operative transplantation, but it becomes their duty to promote the ethics and morality of organ donation, ensuring in no uncertain terms that it must be entirely voluntary and without coercion, and condemning the issue of commercialization.
To cater for the welfare of those in the dialysis and transplantation programmes, the Society had the vision of assisting the setting up the Kidney Patients’ Groups where better rapport could be developed not only amongst those who are victims of the disease for them to share the problems and joy of treatment, but also with the kidney health care team. Such a big family concept has been most helpful in allowing the patients and their families to better understand the disease and treatment modalities, improving thus the compliance to treatment and establishing a closer bondage between the patients and their careers.
In today’s world of globalization, international networking and cooperation is of utmost essential. The Society has therefore been an active participant of the Colloquium in Nephrology, now the Asia Pacific Colloquium since its inception in 1975, hosting conferences in HK since.
Where do we go from here? I think the Society could amongst many areas be very effective in two directions : firstly to push further for more effective organ donation campaigns, and secondly to promulgate more cost effective minimal assisted dialysis institutions.
Finally, on the celebration of the Society’s 25th Anniversary, other than to express my gratitude to the effort the Society and her members have contributed, I have to state that it really has been an honour for me as a surgeon to be accepted into the brotherhood of nephrology, and be allowed to take on the important role of her Founding President.
I wish the Society a resounding success as we march into the next century. |
