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Waitlist Zero is an advocacy group dedicated to promoting living kidney transplantation. [1] Waitlist Zero launched in September 2014, when it obtained its 501(c), [2] with Josh Morrison and Thomas Kelly as co-founders and current executive directors, along with Stephen Rice as its project director. [3]
Waitlist Zero's primary goal is the support of policies which expand kidney donation with both federal and state campaigns. [4]
At a federal level, Waitlist Zero coalition with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in 2015 aims to allow and allocate grants directed to rise living kidney donation, [5] and to implement system-level changes at hospitals regarding donation practices. [4] [6]
State-level (mainly in New York) proposed legislations include covering the financial costs of the operation and guaranteeing donor health insurance. [7]
Non-directed donor education initiatives have also been set in motion, in order to raise awareness about kidney donation, increase the attractiveness of non-directed donations, debunk common misconceptions about living organ transplantation and mobilize donors as constituency group for the organisation. [2] [8]
In January 2015, a social media strategy has also been implemented via Facebook posts, Twitter hashtags and a petition on Change.org asking support from the HRSA. [9]
Waitlist Zero received its major funding in September 2014 of $50,000 as a planning grant, [10] and a year later, in August 2015, $200,000, for general support. [11] Both were granted by the Open Philanthropy Project. They also had received grants from fundraising events and a private donation by Novartis of $35,000. [12]
While a total of $135,000 is expected to be received by the end of 2016, fundraising has since been deprioritized by the board in order to focus on its main goals and values. [12]
Waitlist Zero is part of the Coalition to Promote Living Kidney Donation, a group made of fourteen other non-profit organisations [13] advocating for policies to expand living organ donation. [14]
Organ donation is the process when a person authorizes an organ of their own to be removed and transplanted to another person, legally, either by consent while the donor is alive, through a legal authorization for deceased donation made prior to death, or for deceased donations through the authorization by the legal next of kin.
Organ transplantation is a medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient, to replace a damaged or missing organ. The donor and recipient may be at the same location, or organs may be transported from a donor site to another location. Organs and/or tissues that are transplanted within the same person's body are called autografts. Transplants that are recently performed between two subjects of the same species are called allografts. Allografts can either be from a living or cadaveric source.
Kidney transplant or renal transplant is the organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage kidney disease (ESRD). Kidney transplant is typically classified as deceased-donor or living-donor transplantation depending on the source of the donor organ. Living-donor kidney transplants are further characterized as genetically related (living-related) or non-related (living-unrelated) transplants, depending on whether a biological relationship exists between the donor and recipient. The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954 by a team including Joseph Murray, the recipient’s surgeon, and Hartwell Harrison, surgeon for the donor. Murray was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for this and other work. In 2018, an estimated 95,479 kidney transplants were performed worldwide, 36% of which came from living donors.
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services located in North Bethesda, Maryland. It is the primary federal agency for improving access to health care services for people who are uninsured, isolated or medically vulnerable.
Canadian Blood Services is a non-profit charitable organization that is independent from the Canadian government. The Canadian Blood Services was established as Canada's blood authority in all provinces and territories except for Quebec in 1998. The federal, provincial and territorial governments created the Canadian Blood Services through a memorandum of understanding. Canadian Blood Services is funded mainly through the provincial and territorial governments.
The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is a non-profit scientific and educational organization that administers the only Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) in the United States, established by the U.S. Congress in 1984 by Gene A. Pierce, founder of United Network for Organ Sharing. Located in Richmond, Virginia, the organization's headquarters are situated near the intersection of Interstate 95 and Interstate 64 in the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park.
Organ procurement is a surgical procedure that removes organs or tissues for reuse, typically for organ transplantation.
The National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) of 1984 is an Act of the United States Congress that created the framework for the organ transplant system in the country. The act provided clarity on the property rights of human organs obtained from deceased individuals and established a public-private partnership known as Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). The OPTN was given the authority to oversee the national distribution of organs.
The Healthcare Systems Bureau is part of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Organ trade is the trading of human organs, tissues, or other body products, usually for transplantation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), organ trade is a commercial transplantation where there is a profit, or transplantations that occur outside of national medical systems. There is a global need or demand for healthy body parts for transplantation, which exceeds the numbers available.
Organ transplantation in Israel has historically been low compared to other Western countries due to a common belief that organ donation is prohibited under Jewish law. This changed with the passage of new organ donation laws in 2008. If two patients have the same medical need, priority will now go to the patient who has signed an organ donor card, or whose family members have donated an organ. This policy was nicknamed don't give, don't get. The law also defines "brain death" as an indication of death for all legal purposes, including organ donation. Additionally the law provides financial reimbursement to living donors for medical expenses due to donation and lost time at work. Organ trafficking is explicitly banned. Health insurance plans can no longer reimburse patients who go abroad to receive transplants.
Francis L. Delmonico, MD, FACS is a surgeon, clinical professor and health expert in the field of transplantation. He serves on numerous committees and is affiliated with various leading organizations and institutions. He is the chief medical officer of the New England Organ Bank (NEOB) and Professor of Surgery, Part-Time at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is emeritus director of renal transplantation. He served as president of The Transplantation Society (TTS) from 2012 to 2014, an international non-profit organization based in Montreal, Canada that works with international transplantation physicians and researchers. He also served as the president of the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) in 2005, which overseas the practice of organ donation and transplantation in the United States. He was appointed and still serves as an advisor to the World Health Organization in matters of organ donation and transplantation. He was appointed by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy of Science in 2016. In 2020, he became the recipient of the Medawar Prize of The Transplantation Society.
The practice of selling one's kidney for profit in Iran is legal and regulated by the government. In any given year, it is estimated that 1400 Iranians sell one of their kidneys to a recipient who was previously unknown to them. Iran currently is the only country in the world that allows the sale of one's kidney for compensation ; consequently, the country does not have either a waiting list or a shortage of available organs.
The Ontario Online Donor Registry is a website where Ontario residents, age 16 and older, can register their consent to be an organ and tissue donor. This registry was created to help ease questions and ambiguities with organ donor wishes. The virtual registry also increases Ontario donations with increased accessibility. The registration process can be done through beadonor.ca. Online donor registries have also become popular in the United States, where one can register through Donate Life America; Malaysia, registering through their National Transplant Registry; and Saudi Arabia, registering through the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation.
In bioethics, ethics of organ transplantation refers to the ethical concerns on organ transplantation procedures. Both the source and method of obtaining the organ to transplant are major ethical issues to consider, as well as the notion of distributive justice.
Organ donation is when a person gives their organs after they die to someone in need of new organs. Transplantation is the process of transplanting the organs donated into another person. This process extends the life expectancy of a person suffering from organ failure. The number of patients requiring organ transplants outweighs the number of donor organs available.
Kidney paired donation (KPD), or paired exchange, is an approach to living donor kidney transplantation where patients with incompatible donors swap kidneys to receive a compatible kidney. KPD is used in situations where a potential donor is incompatible. Because better donor HLA and age matching are correlated with lower lifetime mortality and longer lasting kidney transplants, many compatible pairs are also participating in swaps to find better matched kidneys. In the United States, the National Kidney Registry organizes the majority of U.S. KPD transplants, including the largest swaps. The first large swap was a 60 participant chain in 2012 that appeared on the front page of the New York Times and the second, even larger swap, included 70 participants and was completed in 2014. Other KPD programs in the U.S. include the UNOS program, which was launched in 2010 and completed its 100th KPD transplant in 2014, and the Alliance for Paired Donation.
Dorry L. Segev is the Marjory K. and Thomas Pozefsky Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and associate vice chair of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has made significant contributions to the field of transplantation, including developing a mathematical model to facilitate a nationwide kidney paired donation program, both in the US and Canada. He is also known for his role in getting the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act signed into law.
The Trillium Gift of Life Network was an agency of the Government of Ontario responsible for the province's organ donation strategy, promotion, and supply. Ronnie Gavsie was the President & CEO. The agency maintained the popular BeADonor.ca website. It was subsequently subsumed under Ontario Health in 2019.
Organ donation in India is regulated by the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994. The law allows both deceased and living donors to donate their organs. It also identifies brain death as a form of death. The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) functions as the apex body for activities of relating to procurement, allotment and distribution of organs in the country.