In addition, Norbert Lameire from Belgium has been elected Editor-in-Chief of Nephrology, Dialysis Transplantation, along with two new Deputy Editors, Jürgen Floege from Germany and David Wheeler from the UK. Carmine Zoccali continues in his role as Chairman of the Registry. Three new Ordinary Council members have also joined us (João Frazão from Portugal, Pierre Ronco from France and Cengiz Utas from Turkey), with Kai-Uwe Eckardt (Germany), David Goldsmith (UK), Gérard London (France), Iain Macdougall (UK) and Dimitrios Tsakiris (Greece) completing the list of Ordinary Council members.

What do you envisage as the most important steps for the ERA EDTA?

In medicine, both changes and continuous progression are necessary to increase our knowledge; we shall therefore do our best to ensure that the ERA-EDTA consolidates its place at the forefront of new scientific frontiers. Europe as a continent has changed greatly and as a result, its needs are both extremely varied and challenging. Our policy will be mainly orientated towards fostering the progress and interaction of Nephrology in Europe, with an aim to uniting our efforts to achieve our goals.
We will concentrate a significant part of our initiatives and funding in three areas. We will continue with the expansion of our Educational Programme, with both residential and non-residential courses, covering all areas of Nephrology and giving special place to translational Nephrology. We wish to launch Pan European Research Projects, Research Fellowship Exchange Programmes and Clinical Outcomes studies; the latter being mainly led by the ERA-EDTA Registry. Some of these initiatives are almost ready for implementation. In addition, we will make an effort in order to coordinate and collaborate more with other Societies, such as the International Society and the National Societies of Nephrology.

What is the role of “Follow us” in these new initiatives?

“Follow us” will help US to keep the ERA-EDTA membership informed about the progress we make in our new initiatives. I am confident that with the support and advice of the Council and the Membership we will continue to move ahead.