By Nancy De Los Santos
According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases, as of August 2021, 90,201 people were on the waiting list for a kidney transplant.
Another person is added to the waiting list every nine minutes. Seventeen people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant. There were 24,300 kidney transplants in 2019 — 72% were from a deceased donor.
Non-Hispanic White patients comprised the largest proportion of transplant recipients at 45%, followed by Black, 27%,- Hispanic, 19%, and Asian, 7%, participants. Although the number of kidney transplants performed in the United States was 30% higher in 2019 compared with 2015, this was still insufficient to meet demand.
A shortage of donors remains the primary obstacle to achieving these goals. As of 2021, 169 million people in the US have registered as donors, but not everyone who registers as a donor is able to donate. In fact, only 3 in 1,000 people die in a way that allows for deceased organ donation.
For more information on organ donation, contact The Donate Life of America Foundation at www.donatelife.net/, the National Kidney Foundation at www.kidney.org/transplantation or the National Foundation for Transplants www.transplants.org/.