End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)

The business of BOVITECH directly addresses the private and public health industry demand for kidney replacement therapy. In 2013, there were approximately 3.2 million people under treatment for ESRD world-wide according to the US Renal Data System and the European Renal Care Providers Association. In the EU, 339,700 people were on dialysis. In the USA, there were 400,000 patients on dialysis and about 100,000 new patients start dialysis each year. While there are no reliable data for all of China, Taiwan has the highest ESRD rate per million population in the world. The market for kidney transplants is established but is severely under serviced.

As shown in the tables below, there is quite a significant gap between the number of patients on dialysis (or new patients starting it) and the number of kidney transplants per year.

Table 1. ESRD Patients and the Health Burden in Three Representative Countries,

Table 2. Comparison of Number of Annual Kidney Transplants

The small numbers of kidney transplants are due to the shortage of human kidney donors. Current criteria allow only for 600 patients in New Zealand to be on the waiting list for kidney transplants whereas many more of the 2,600 on dialysis would benefit but because of age or medical complications are considered of lower priority and have no chance of receiving a human kidney transplant. Furthermore, there are 360 new patients with ESRD every year.

• Economic Cost: The International and National Burden of Disease

ESRD is a major cost driver for health-care systems, with annual growth of dialysis programs ranging between 6% and 12% over the past two decades and continuing to grow, particularly in developing countries.

In the USA, the ESRD medical reimbursements amount to USD 50 billion per year. Below is the cost of ESRD treatment types per person per year.

Dialysis is costing the New Zealand health sector NZD 150 million, which is estimated to be 3 times the cost of transplantation on a per patient per year basis. The cost per person per year on dialysis varies from NZD 40,000 to 80,000 (average NZD 60,000). In comparison, the cost of a kidney transplant is less than NZD 90,000 in the first year and then NZD 10,000 per year thereafter.

Based on these data, it is clear that kidney transplants are widely accepted as offering a better quality of life and at lower cost.