I AM a very lucky and grateful kidney transplant patient who received a live kidney from my wife eight years ago.
The reality for most patients with kidney diseases is very different in this country. We have 25,000 kidney patients on dialysis in the UK. Three thousand of them die every year; 400 die while on the kidney transplant list.
This list consists of 7,000 patients and around 2,500 transplants are undertaken each year.
There has been a welcome rise in the number of people on the organ register recently and the number of transplants has also increased, particularly from live donors. However, kidney patients on the transplant list continue to die every year.
We currently transplant around seven kidneys per day. There are, therefore, some vital kidneys which are wasted and not used for transplantation, mainly because the potential donor does not die in a hospital. If we transplanted seven more kidneys per day, then the waiting list would disappear in a few years.
In Harrow, we need our primary care trust, hospitals, GPs, kidney patients and their well-wishers to consider this serious issue and find creative ways of dealing with it. Our MPs and councillors need to help us resolve this unacceptable situation and lobby on our behalf.
We need more people, particularly from black and minority backgrounds, to become donors. More importantly, we need more people who have chosen to register to save lives by being on the organ donor register, to be able to do so.
KIRIT MODI Chestnut Avenue
Edgware
