Need still outpaces supply
Published 12:01 am Friday, April 8, 2011
In March, a Detroit area man received a kidney donation a year after his wife made a desperate plea on her Facebook page for help.
“Wishing a kidney would fall out of the sky so my husband can stop suffering,” Roxy Kurze, 30, wrote on Facebook, the Detroit Free Press reported. “So if anyone knows of a live donor with type O blood, PLEASE let me know.”
Instead, Ricky Cisco, 25, fell out of cyberspace and let Kurze know — although he had never thought of organ donation before — that he was a match, he wanted to be the donor. The transplant was done March 30 and both Cisco and Jeff Kurze are out of the hospital, looking to return to work.
In November, after state funding cuts, an Arizona man, Francisco Felix, 32, was denied a liver transplant — one designated for him, a gift from a dying friend — because he couldn’t raise the $200,000 (in less than 24 hours) needed for the operation. The liver was given to the next person on the waiting list, the Arizona Republic reported.
In 2009, Apple CEO and Californian Steve Jobs famously received a new liver in Tennessee, after traveling the country to get on as many waiting lists as possible, in regions where more organs are available, an option open to all those who can afford it. Jobs was one of 3,400 Californians awaiting a new liver in 2009, according to news reports. Only 671 people received one; 400 died.
In October, California passed a law — one that never went anywhere until Jobs championed it — that will create a live donor registry for kidney transplants. It also requires drivers to decide whether they want to be organ donors when renewing their licenses.
The inequity of organ distribution is well known. But even if a perfect distribution system existed, the reality is that there aren’t enough organs to meet the need, not even close.
On Thursday, in a letter to the editor on this page, a mother made a plea for a kidney for her adult son, noting Swedish Medical Center’s Benevolent Community Donor Program, which allows people to donate a kidney without a specific person in mind.
Programs like this, and California’s donor registry, provide hope we will be able to help each other as the demand for organs only grows greater. Equally important is continuing education, and not only from health-care sources. Religious organizations have a great opportunity and responsibility to play a key role by ensuring their members know their beliefs allow organ donation, and many consider it an act of love.
