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Alliance for Paired Donation to hold anniversary for kidney donors, recipients |
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Oct 16, 2008
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The Alliance for Paired Donation (APD) will hold its first anniversary celebration to recognize the living kidney donors and recipients who have been connected through the efforts of APD. A dinner and silent auction will be held Saturday, Oct. 18, at 6:30 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn at Levis Commons in Perrysburg.
Matt Jones, the altruistic donor who started the world’s first NEAD (Never-Ending Altruistic Donor) Chain will be recognized for his generous act of donating a kidney to someone he didn’t know prior to the transplant. Because of his generosity, 10 people now have received a life-saving kidney transplant. The 10 transplants span six states and five transplant centers, and were carried out over eight months in 2007 and 2008.
Additionally, Tracy Armstrong, who started the second altruistic donor chain, will be at the celebration, along with two recipients in his chain. The fourth donor in this chain donated a kidney Oct. 14. The third NEAD chain began at the end of August, and the fourth chain is set to begin this month in Texas.
Also to be recognized are the donors and recipients who have been helped through traditional exchanges facilitated by the APD. Most recently, a three-way paired exchange took place between three transplant centers in Colorado, Alabama and North Carolina in three time zones. The surgeries were made possible through the computer-matching program offered by the Alliance for Paired Donation, a Toledo-based nonprofit organization that seeks to shorten the waiting time for kidney recipients through kidney paired donation using living donors. Typically, paired exchanges match two pairs who each have a willing, but incompatible, living donor. Altruistic donor chains — dubbed NEAD chains by the APD — allow for many more people to be helped and for paired exchange transplants to occur sequentially, rather than making it necessary for them to be done simultaneously.
“This event is to celebrate and honor the incredibly generous people who have been willing to give a kidney so that their loved one could receive a kidney,” said Dr. Michael Rees, director of the Alliance for Paired Donation, UT associate professor of urology and medical director of UT Medical Center’s kidney transplant program. “We especially want to recognize those ‘good samaritan’ donors who don’t have a loved one needing a kidney, but whose willingness to go the extra mile enables someone to live a more productive, healthier and longer life.”
Honorary program chair for the event is actor Jamie Farr, and other program committee members include Senators Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich. Many supporters from The University of Toledo Medical Center, which serves as a flagship transplant program in the Alliance for Paired Donation, also will be in attendance.
Funds raised will be used to support the ongoing work of the alliance, especially to enable more kidney donors to travel to the recipient’s transplant center.
As of Oct. 1, more than 77,000 patients were awaiting a kidney transplant in the United States — more than 2,200 in Ohio alone. In 2007, 16,626 kidney transplants were performed; of those, 6,039 were from living donors. On average, 17 people die every day due to a lack of donated organs —12 due to lack of a kidney transplant. Kidney paired donation has the potential to provide transplants for up to an additional 3,000 people per year.
The Alliance for Paired Donation is h
Headquartered in Toledo, the Alliance for Paired Donation’s mission is to save lives by significantly shortening the waiting time for kidney patients through paired donation. In its first 18 months of operation, the alliance facilitated 23 paired exchange transplants; more than half of these were due to altruistic donors. Learn more about the program by visiting www.paireddonation.org or by calling 419.866.5505.
Tickets to the dinner and silent auction are available by calling 419.360.7445 or go to www.paireddonation.org.
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