New measures against chronic kidney diseases in Japan since 2018

Since 2008, the Japanese government has started measures against chronic kidney disease (CKD), and steady changes have been achieved, including a decrease in the age-adjusted rate of new dialysis introduction. However, the total number of dialysis patients has not declined because of the progression of aging. Therefore, the Japanese government has started more concrete measures since 2018. It aims to prevent CKD exacerbation mainly by early referrals to nephrologists using “criteria for referral from a primary care physician to a kidney specialist/specialized medical institution”. In addition, key performance indicators are set to reduce the number of new dialysis patients from 39,000 in 2016 to ≤ 35,000 by 2028. We hope that you can refer to this measure all over the world and proceed with CKD measures. This report has been originally notified from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japanese. This is the English version of it.