A new study has shown that African Americans are quite willing to give organs to family members, but don’t seem to care much about strangers. Whites are found to be far more willing to make their organs available to anyone who needs them, but African Americans are not so quick to do so.
Naeesa Aziz–When it comes to kidney donation, African-Americans donate almost exclusively to family members, as compared to Caucasians, according to a study published by medical researchers at Wake Forest University.
“African-Americans are overrepresented in the dialysis population and they are underrepresented among those who receive living donor kidney transplants, the best option for long-term treatment of kidney disease,” said Amber Reeves-Daniel, lead author of the study and medical director of the Living Kidney Donor Program at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, in Winston-Salem, N.C. “The more we can understand what contributes to people’s willingness to donate one of their kidneys, the better job we can do of educating potential living donors about the need and allay fears about the risks.”
The study, published online in the September/October issue of the journal, Clinical Transplantation, sought to characterize differences in donor and recipient relationships between African-American and Caucasian living kidney donors.
