A new organization, Kidneys for Communities, plans to advocate for living kidney donation by seeking donors who identify with a particular community. Their come-on is "Put your kidney where your heart is. Share your spare with someone in your community"
They say "Kidneys for Communities was founded on the idea that communities inherently take care of each other. If we can save a life, we can save the world.
"When we tap in to the compassion and connection of communities, we can radically increase the number of living kidney donors around the world and save tens of thousands of lives every year. By enlisting one community after another to join our mission, more donors will choose to give, more lives will be saved and more communities will be strengthened."
**********
Here's their press release, which includes the idea of a community member starting a kidney exchange chain that would end with a donation to a community member:
"Tackling the living kidney-donor shortage, Kidneys for Communities, a nonprofit, has launched the first-ever national community-directed donation program to increase the pool of living kidney donors in the United States.
"The pandemic has impacted living kidney donations across the U.S. According to the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), living kidney donations in 2020 dropped to just 5,237, the lowest number in just over two decades.
...
"The Kidneys for Communities model addresses the significant shortage of living kidney donations in the U.S., where more than 100,000 people are in immediate need of a kidney transplant, according to the OPTN. Based on OPTN data, of those who receive kidneys from living donors, approximately 95 percent know or are associated with the donor through their community network.
"The community-directed donation model increases living kidney donations by allowing potential donors who belong to membership-based associations to direct their lifesaving donation to someone—even a potential stranger—based on a community they want to support.
...
"To further increase living donor and recipient matches, Kidneys for Communities partners with leaders in the renal transplantation field, including Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation, which matches willing but incompatible kidney donor and recipient pairs through paired donations.
"Through Kidneys for Communities and Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation, a person can donate their kidney on a community member's behalf, similar to a voucher concept; the member in need is then entered into a pool, where they're matched with a viable donor. This creates a chain that allows for at least two people in need to receive a kidney: the member of the respective community and another recipient in need.
**********
The program is loosely motivated by some of the faith-based organiztions that have been so successful in recruiting living donors in the U.S. and Israel.
Related posts
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment