Public-Private Partnership in RRT: Single Centre Experience from Karnataka State CAPD Pilot Project

Developing countries like India face a resource crunch when dealing with healthcare expenses. Renal Replacement Therapy (RRT) invariably suffers as a consequence of this resource crunch. As a result a large number of patients go with little or zero access to RRT. Additional difficulties faced in a large and diverse country like India include difficult terrain, poor literacy, cultural, social and religious issues. CAPD is thought to be effective in bridging some of these gaps if effectively utilized, as demonstrated by the PD first Policy in Thailand, a country quite similar to India. Cost effective RRT should aim at best possible utilization of existing facilities apart from ease and patient satisfaction with the procedure. To explore whether CAPD could resolve some of the issues facing RRT in India, the Govt of Karnataka State embarked on a CAPD pilot project, notifying 2 centres with 20 patients each and a fixed budget, with a Public -Private Partnership (PPP) model. We present our experiences in Mangalore, one of the centres notified for this project.