CARI - Caring for Australasians with Renal Impairment

It doesn't get any more Australian than this. The CARI logo, a stylised rendering of a pair of koalas sketched for us by Sydney artist Oliver Watts, quickly identifies the guidelines as Australian and suggests renal impairment to those up on their koala lore.

The name koala is thought to derive from an Aboriginal dialect once common in what is now New South Wales, with transcriptions varying from koolewong to cullewine. In any case, the name koala seems a bit better suited to the friendly looking little bloke or sheila than its Latin moniker Phascolarctus cinereus.

So where's the connection to the patient with renal impairment? Koala means 'no drink', coming from the traditional belief that the koala gets all its water from its food. So, of course, the koala would make an ideal dialysis patient (the human patient, however, generally enjoys a more varied diet than the koala's exclusive predilection for eucalyptus leaves). In addition, koalas, like many other Australian marsupials, are able to conserve water by producing small amounts of highly concentrated urine. The koala is an appropriate symbol for Australia's own renal guidelines.

About the CARI logo