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Approximately 300,000 Americans with kidney disease are hooked up to dialysis machines three or four times a week. Many of these patients are awaiting transplants, but organ donors are scarce. They're even more rare, judging by the numbers, if the patients happen to be African-American.
According to the Wall Street Journal, of the nearly 60,000 Americans awaiting a kidney transplant, 35% are black. They wait an average of nearly five years for a transplant - compared with just over two years for whites.
Holly Kernan, news director at KALW in San Francisco, follows the story of one kidney patient who is seeking a transplant and finding that his race is a factor.
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Piece Description
Approximately 300,000 Americans with kidney disease are hooked up to dialysis machines three or four times a week. Many of these patients are awaiting transplants, but organ donors are scarce. They're even more rare, judging by the numbers, if the patients happen to be African-American. According to the Wall Street Journal, of the nearly 60,000 Americans awaiting a kidney transplant, 35% are black. They wait an average of nearly five years for a transplant - compared with just over two years for whites. Holly Kernan, news director at KALW in San Francisco, follows the story of one kidney patient who is seeking a transplant and finding that his race is a factor.
Broadcast History
This piece aired on NPR's News and Notes with Ed Gordon on August 1, 2005. It originally aired on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco, on July 10, 2005.
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Chelsea Merz
Posted on December 29, 2005 at 10:55 AM | Permalink
Review of Health: Transplant Discrimination
There is no doubt a need to hear about race and healthcare--particularly as Black History Month approaches. As it is now, this personal story of Robert Philip's kidney transplant is inadequate as an illustration of discrimination. It leaves you wishing that he had shared more specific details from his years of being on a transplant waiting list. When we do hear from a medical expert, a director of a Kidney Transplant Unit, he says "This problem has so many factors that you can't point at any one-- or any five factors-- that go into explaining why blacks receive fewer transplants than whites." But as a listener we are dying to know what some of these factors are. It's our only opportunity, in this piece, to fully understand the complexity of this issue--and to recognize it as a reality within the healthcare system. This piece does bring the issue of discrimintation to the surface but at the end you are left with a nagging sense that there is so much more that we need to know. This could be remedied by a host intro that is heavy on the scientific data that prove that there is transplant discrimination. If you consider broadcasting this it would be compatible with ME or ATC, particulary during Black History Month.