Wanted: Black Organ Donors -- New York, New York

By Tony Best

January 14, 2005

As she sat up in the bed of a New York City hospital, the Bajan was preparing for death but thinking of life.

A contradiction right?

Wrong!

Actually, she wasn't worrying about her own life, having come to terms with the fact that the end was near, perhaps in a matter of days or weeks.

But yes, she was thinking of a man, woman or child who could benefit from an organ, tissue or other body part that when transplanted would allow someone to spend several years in better health.

"She was generous to the end," said a close friend.

As it turned out, some of her organs weren't suitable for transplantation but the ones, which could be used, were to be removed after her death and given away.

"She discussed it and made the necessary arrangements," explained the friend.

So within hours of her death some body parts were extracted and the rest, as they say, is history.

But she wasn't alone.

A Bajan woman living in the suburbs of New York recently gave her husband a kidney. The same thing happened the other day in Canada where a wife also gave her husband a kidney. And there is the story of a sister in Canada who gave her ailing Bajan brother in the United States a kidney.

Indeed, conversations with physicians indicate that Bajan women in North America are much more generous than men when it comes to kidney donations.

That trend fits into a national pattern in the United States where, said Dr Velma Scantlebury, a Barbadian, a top transplant surgeon who is listed among the "best doctors in America," women readily step forward to donate organs for relatives and spouses.

"Yes, it's a fact that women are the major donors of kidneys," she told listeners to Thinking it Through, a talk show on WLIB radio in New York.

Dr Scantlebury, a professor of surgery at the University of South Alabama and Director of its Regional Transplant Centre, has performed more than 700 transplants in her career, is regularly cited by national institutions for her national efforts to encourage Americans, especially Blacks, to consider organ donation.

Life-Saving

With more than 87 000 people currently waiting for life-saving organ transplants, at least 25 per cent of them are black, the Barbadian who was described by the American Medical Association as the country's first black female kidney transplant surgeon, knows the value of organ donation.

"The organ shortage in the country is a medical crisis, especially in the black community, where the need is the greatest," she said recently. "Certainly, increased rates of African-American organ donation can help ease the crisis by creating the opportunity for more transplants."

Some figures underscore the gravity of the situation and explain why more and more Bajan women in North America are stepping forward and donating organs.

For example, 15 Americans die every day waiting for an organ transplant. Every 13 minutes someone, somewhere in the United States is added to the nation's organ transplant waiting list.

Blacks make up 12 per cent of the population but 40 per cent of all cases of renal failure in the country, the leading cause of kidney transplants. But they receive only 25 per cent of all available kidneys and usually have to wait twice as long as Whites for transplants.

Over the past decade, there has been a 166 per cent increase in the number of Blacks awaiting transplants.

To deal with the problem, the Barbadian has become the national spokesperson for Linkages to Life, a campaign that encourages Blacks to donate organs, tissue and bone marrow. She is working with churches to "help demystify organ donation while emphasising the critical need in the black community," she said.

"As a group blacks in America have a greater-than-average need for organ and tissue transplantation because of the relatively high incidence of certain medical conditions that can cause permanent organ damage, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and kidney disorders," she said.

Some experts believe patients fare better when both donor and recipient are from the same racial or ethnic group.

Copyright © 2001-2004 Nation Publishing Co. Limited, Barbados Nation Online newspaper.

This article posted February 5, 2005.