March is National Kidney Month
In collaboration with Departments of Health officials across the United States, and transplant surgeons in New York, MatchingDonors.com, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and the world’s largest online living donor organization, has launched a public education campaign throughout the U.S. to help people recognize that they can be living organ donors and to encourage them to register as living organ donors. The National Living Organ Donor Initiative program has already saved thousands of lives.
Nineteen people die every day waiting for an organ transplant in the U.S.; many are from New York. There are millions of people in the U.S. who need an organ transplant, but only about 100,000 are registered on the government’s current deceased organ donor list, because there are too few deceased donor organs.
MatchingDonors.com has become the world’s largest and most successful nonprofit organization promoting, registering and finding living organ donors for people needing organ transplants.
Currently, patients waiting for an organ donation are placed on a national waiting list through the government. A computer system matches patients to donor organs according to objective criteria such as blood and tissue type, immune status, medical urgency and time spent on the waiting list — the average time to receive a deceased organ is seven to nine years on this list. This ranking system determines which patients are offered available organs. MatchingDonors.com offers a way to enhance the search with a more active approach. Many patients receive their kidney transplant within six months of registering on MatchingDonors.com.
