Good morning!! I came across this story on CNN yesterday and wanted to share it with you!! It is a very touching story about a kidney pairing program that successfully transplanted 13 kidneys, 11 of whom were minorities. This is great news and I'm excited to share the story with you all!!
Clip from the article:
"According the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Minority Health, the rate of organ donation in minority communities does not keep pace with the number needing transplants. Many times, it's because of fear of the medical community or mistrust of the system. Health experts say that's unfortunate. A report by HHS noted, "although minorities donate in proportion to their share of the population, their need for transplants is much greater." African Americans, the report said, make up about 13 percent of the population and about 12 percent of donors, but they represent 23 percent of the patients on the kidney waiting list. Citing the critical need, Melancon [Patterson's Doctor] is urging minorities to join the exchange programs. "It's very important for minorities to receive living transplants, because their outcome with deceased donor transplants are not as good as everyone else," Melancon said. Additionally, years of dialysis can lead to a build-up of antibodies, which can cause rejection of the new organ. That's especially true for minorities, because they tend to stay on dialysis much longer. Patients who have this build-up of antibodies receive a blood cleansing procedure called plasmapheresis to trick their bodies into accepting the kidney without rejection." Both the article and video says, it is extremely important that minorities become organ donors and get involved in the organ pairing programs. According to UNOS, as of December 11, 2009 there were 113,801 individuals waiting for a life saving transplant. Of those individuals only 52,296 were caucasian registrants. The remaining 61,505 primarily consists of African American (33,075) and Hispanic (19,932) registrants. So lets start spreading the news about living donation and how important it is for everyone, especially minorities, to consider!!
