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April is National Donate Life Month, a time when organizations raise awareness about organ and tissue donation programs.
Nationally, more than 100,000 people are currently awaiting an organ transplant, including about 5,000 people in the Greater Philadelphia region, according to Rick Hasz, CEO of Gift of Life, a local organ donation program.
Hasz said most waitlisted patients in the area are waiting on a new kidney, and that some people wait for more than five years.
“With kidney disease, you have dialysis that can kind of get you through until that transplant, but the mortality rate on dialysis is very high. And so some people never get that second chance,” Hasz said.
On April 30, Celeste Brown, a Lawnside resident, will celebrate one year of receiving a new kidney.
Brown had been adamantly against organ donation when Gift of Life reached out in 2004 to inquire if she wanted to donate her son’s organs.
“I thought that was very disrespectful at the time. I felt like they didn’t care because I had just lost a loved one,” Brown said, recounting a phone call she had soon after her son was murdered.
Brown, who is Black, had a change of heart in 2021 when she fell sick and needed a kidney transplant of her own.
Black Americans disproportionately have a greater need for organ transplants due to a higher prevalence of hypertension and diabetes, yet Black patients tend to wait longer for matching organs because not enough Black people donate, Hasz said.
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