Wednesday 9 December 

Helping to meet the need for kidney transplants has led Austin Health to enter into a sister-renal program with an Indonesian hospital called Dr Kariadi.

Dr Kariadi is based in Semarang, the capital of Central Java, and has established a renal service which is working to address the huge demands for kidney care in the Central Java province.

Austin Health’s Deputy Director of Nephrology, Associate Professor Peter Mount, has been instrumental in setting up this program and explains that its key purpose is for Austin Health to share knowledge and best practice with a growing renal service.

“Austin Health is a leader and centre of excellence for renal care and transplantation,” A/Prof Mount said.

"We’ve entered into this program in the hope that we can share our key learnings from over the years, and help Dr Kariadi expand its renal services.

"It’s about furthering our field across the world, and helping people access life changing renal care or transplantation,” he said.

A/Prof Mount compared Victoria’s population of 6.4 million with that of Central Java of 34.7 million, and explained that there is enormous unmet need for kidney health and renal transplantation in Java.

“We perform all kidney transplants not only for Austin Health, but also for Eastern Health and Bendigo Health, and live donation for St Vincent’s and Barwon Health. We serve a catchment of about two million people, and do around 70 kidney transplants in a year.

"At Dr Kariadi they do 10 transplants a year, which is a great starting point for a developing service.

"However, the scale of unmet need is definitely part of our longer-term rationale for creating this relationship,” A/Prof Mount said.

Traditionally, with a sister-renal program like this, staff from both hospitals would visit Austin Health and Dr Kariadi. However, due to COVID-19 they’ve been unable to travel.

Incredibly, they’ve been able to continue the program through regular Teams meetings.

Dr Kariadi Hospital’s Dr Dwi-Lestari Partiningrum says that her team want to learn from Austin Health. 

“We get to ask lots of questions, and gain knowledge about things we haven’t experienced yet. We then put in this in practice for our patients,” she said.

"We’ll discuss patient cases, things that have arisen. It’s good to get different perspective on things.

“The education, knowledge and support has been invaluable. The relationship with Austin Health is helping us further our practices now and into the future," Dr Partiningrum said.