My name is Sam and I’m an extremely lucky, completely blessed, and eternally grateful heart recipient and survivor since April 2015. Like most organ recipients, I too hadn’t imagined ever needing a transplant but now, almost 11 years post-transplant, I’m not just surviving, but thriving. My first-hand experiences have allowed me to listen, observe, and become well-educated about all things Organ Donation and Transplantation over the years. I’ve become a fierce advocate/voice for transplant patients/recipients and others who may be connected to transplantation, both as an individual contributor and through other advocacy entities/organizations. I’m not an expert in this arena by any means, but I try to be aware, diligent, and be well-informed about things going on in this ever-evolving space.
I feel it’s important for all of us in the larger transplant community to be involved and invested in our collective care, which is why in upcoming newsletters, I plan on providing information about relevant media stories, advocacy efforts, and proposed legislation.
If anyone has relevant items/information to share, your content could possibly be featured in this section of the newsletter! Kindly contact me by sending a direct message to my profile on TransplantLyfe. Alternatively, please don’t hesitate to email me at sam@transplantlyfe.com.
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At present, in the United States, there are over 90,000 people waiting to receive a life-saving kidney transplant. The demand for kidneys far exceeds the supply, leading to long waits, sometimes more than 5 years. Over the years, there have been some policy changes and efforts to improve data, equity, and transplant rates. However, the waitlist continues to grow because not enough folks are able to be transplanted due to the shortage of organs. Additionally, there’s been a troubling decline in deceased donor transplants in the last 12 months. Consequently, the need for more donors is even more critical. One viable solution to increase the donor pool is to encourage more living donors to step forward and donate a kidney to save a life. To that end, there has been some great work to introduce legislation that could help mitigate the organ shortage situation.
One such proposed legislation is the (EKDA) End Kidney Deaths Act (H.R. 2687) which is a ten-year pilot program that will provide a refundable tax credit of $10,000 each year (for a total of $50,000 over 5 years) to living kidney donors who donate a kidney to save the life of a stranger, by way of a non-directed donation. A non-directed kidney donor is someone who donates without having a specific recipient in mind when donating a kidney. This one selfless act could even start a “chain” of transplants which would potentially help several recipients. These non-directed kidneys will go to those on the National Waiting List who have been listed for the longest. The hope is that by the 10th year after the passage of the EKDA, up to 100,000 Americans who had been suffering on the waitlist will instead have healthy kidneys. (Also, over this period of time, taxpayers will have saved several billions too.)
To learn more information about EKDA, you can visit its Congress.gov listing, and/or https://www.endkidneydeathsact.org/., and watch this educational video. Interested advocates can also sign this petition.
#Advocacymatters #PatientVoice #livingdonorssavelives #shareyourspare #beanorgandonor #bealivingdonorhero
