Wanted: Your Kidney

A 59-year-old Australian grandmother desperate for an organ transplant today placed an advert in a newspaper which pleaded: Wanted - your spare kidney.

The woman, called Gaile, said she had been on a waiting list for a kidney transplant for a decade. She currently needs five three-hour dialysis sessions a week to survive.

"I'm taking this chance to see if anything will come of it, with this advertisement there is a glimmer of hope things could change," she told Perth's Sunday Times, which published the advert.

Gaile said her four daughters could not donate their kidneys because two suffered from the same hereditary disease and the other two did not match her tissue type. The newspaper did not name the disease.

She said it would take a "pretty special" stranger to donate a kidney.

Gaile's medical specialist said he expected the advertisement to cause a stir in the medical profession.

"This is way out there but I think she has been driven to do it by sheer frustration," said the specialist, who was not identified.

"It's not what I would recommend but I don't blame her."

The advertisement asks anyone with an O or B blood type wanting to help to reply to a post office box or an e-mail address.

Copyright © 2003 Trinity Mirror PLC.

This article posted April 17, 2003.