HOUSTON – Thursday is World Kidney Day, and this year the Houston-based Living Bank is focusing on females in need of kidneys from living donors.
Due to pregnancy complications, like pre-eclampsia, some women are put at risk for kidney disease later in life, often leading to dialysis and increasing the transplant list by the thousands.
Twenty-two Americans die every day while waiting for a transplant because the need for organs is greater than the number of available donations from deceased donors. Living organ donations help bridge the gap, serving as the fastest option with the best results to save a life.
“To see a loved one come back to life and have energy again is, is just an amazing feeling and living kidney donors they are, they're a special breed of people. So, World Kidney Day supports all of that. Kidney health, and kidney treatment and it's important because people don't realize, a lot of the Americans, a lot of the 30 million Americans that have chronic kidney disease don't even know they have it,” said Kelly Perdue, the president and CEO at The Living Bank.
The Living Bank works to educate the public on the benefits of living organ donation to ensure that more Americans give the gift of life.
Women are much more likely to donate a kidney than men. The International Society of Nephrology shows more than one-third of women donate a kidney to their husbands but only 7 percent of men donate a kidney to their wives.
