Well, April’s national donate life Month and tonight, 123,000 Americans are waiting on a transplant. An overwhelming majority need a kidney, a racially biased formula kept thousands of black patients from getting a kidney transplant. But local doctors tell 10 Tampa Bay’s Malik Rankin. That is now changing.
Black Americans are more than three times as likely than white people to experience kidney failure. That’s according to the National Kidney Foundation. And now hospitals have learned the equation used to place patients on the organ waiting list for a kidney was racially biased.
So if you had one patient or two patients who were comparable, however, one was black, this equation would falsely elevate the kidney function to a degree that in many cases that patient wouldn’t be able to be referred to a transplant center nationwide. More than 14,000 black kidney transplant candidates have
Been given credit for lost waiting time. Now bringing them closer to receiving a kidney, one patient received eight years of waiting time and we’ve transplanted 40 patients as a result. That’s at Tampa General Hospital alone. The hospital has credited more than 300 years of waiting
Time back to black patients over the last six months and recognize that we need to rectify this issue. And all transplant centers were encouraged to review their list and, and update this, this testing to the race, neutral coefficient. Doctor Anthony Watkins says the average waiting time for a kidney is 3
To 5 years for some this review mandate could save their life. Patients are excited because you know, at least now as they were waiting on the list, they’re gaining more waiting time that they didn’t know that they had for Watkins access to health
Care should be fair and available to all of every skin color. Black people have the highest incidence of kidney disease yet they have the lowest access to transplant. So whatever we can do, whatever I can do as a physician to break down those barriers and to increase
His access is an important mission of mine in Tampa, Malik, Rankin 10, Tampa Bay. There really is a tremendous need and Doctor Watkins is aging everyone to sign up to be a living organ donor during national donate Life month. It’s as easy as checking a box when renewing your driver’s license.
