Giving a Gift of Life
By Theodore Fischer
August/September 2006
Wanted: Hispanic organ donors. Between January 1988 and April 2006, nearly 37,000 Hispanics received organ transplants, while fewer than 10,000 donated organs, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
The need is especially great because matches between members of the same racial and ethnic group stand a greater chance of success. More than 98,000 people in the United States—including some 15,000 Hispanics—await organ transplants. Every day 17 of them die.
Why don’t Hispanics donate? “Many believe their religion doesn’t support it, but the Roman Catholic Church wholeheartedly does,” says Stacy Alvarez Underwood, chair of the Hispanic Campaign Workgroup of the Coalition on Donation. “Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI encourage organ donations. Both signed donor cards.”
Rubén Darío Caseiro received a kidney in 1990. Now he competes in the World and U.S. Transplant Games, Olympics-like events for transplant recipients. “Some Hispanic people are afraid that doctors can take their organs while they’re still alive,” he says. Not to worry: While organs such as kidneys can be donated by a living person, surgery cannot proceed without the donor’s consent.
Comedian Rich Ramirez uses his liver transplant experience in his show You Want a Piece of Me? “It’s an opportunity to save people’s lives,” he says.
While a bill that could increase organ donations languishes in Congress, patients who need transplants turn to the Internet, fliers, clubs, even billboards for help.
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