A nephrologist's African journal

Abstract

This article describes, with the format of a journal, the day by day experience of an Italian nephrologist during one of his humanitarian missions in a hospital in the north of Benin Republic (a subSaharan country of West Africa). Besides the description of his clinical activity and educational programmes (focused on the teaching of the clinical importance of urinary sediment examination), the author supplies a view of the major limitations renal patients face everyday due to the lack of money and adequate diagnostic and therapeutical tools. The author concludes that this unacceptable situation is one aspect of the inequity existing between developed and underdeveloped countries.