Open to all our delegates throughout the conference will be the usual exciting Industry exhibition where the latest technological advances will be on show. There are also the daily educational sessions, also run by Industry.

On Saturday, before the opening of the formal conference, there are 2 Pre-Conference Workshops run by the EDTNA/ERCA Research Board and the Transplant Special Interest Group. These workshops, which start at 12.00, have to be pre-booked as numbers are limited.

The conference opens formally at 18.00. Our first guest speaker is Prof Gokal who is well known to EDTNA/ERCA delegates as a world renowned specialist in Peritoneal Dialysis.

The Theme of this conference is the diversity of culture, both of those receiving and of those giving health care. Professor Feest is giving an overview of renal failure, and we have many sessions which are focusing on the various challenges of co-morbidity caused through renal failure. These will include a paper on hypertension from Professor Rodicio who is the European President of the Hypertensive Society, and Professor Locatelli, the president of EDTA, will be talking about how to prevent the progression of renal disease. Cultural differences in transplant and health care are being addressed, amongst others, by Dr Shemesh, Ms Ozdag, Gurch Randhawa, and Professor Kreitler. During the AGM, Professor Van Holder, the Chairman of the European Best Practice Guidelines Group, will give an outline of the work done on Haemodialysis.

There are meetings with workshops for all the Special Interest Groups. This year we are having two round table discussions with expert panels, one will be discussing access and the other hypertension. There will be a debate on the cost of the specialist renal nurse. We have Pippa Gough, one of the King’s Fund Leadership team, giving a workshop on the important issue of leadership. Nick Instan and Andrew Ready are discussing the problems of transplantation in our multi-cultural society, and the conference ends with a debate about the ethics of buying and selling kidneys led by Janet Ratcliffe-Richards. Anyone who has a question regarding kidney transplantation is invited to bring it, in writing, to the Head Office desk prior to this session so that it may be discussed.

The Oral poster presentation sessions continue; posters presented in this way are chosen for content that will promote interactive discussion.

The final party is to be held in the Aston Villa Football ground.

This is only a preview of what is on offer at our 32nd EDTNA/ERCA Conference. Full information on the Conference Programme, selected abstracts, corporate education sessions, guest speakers, registration, etc will be available on-line by the end of May at: http://www.edtna-erca.org.

Cordelia Ashwanden
Scientific Programme Chair
cordiash@aol.com