National Kidney Registry, Improving the lives of people facing kidney failure by increasing the quality, speed and number of living donor transplants

Transplantation saves lives. The average patient with end stage renal disease will live 10 years longer if they receive a kidney transplant versus staying on dialysis? Unfortunately, there are not enough kidneys to help everyone in need. Over 67,000 people are on the kidney transplant waiting list in America. Sadly, about 12 of these patients die every day while awaiting a kidney, or one person every two hours. To make matters worse, there are mysteries of the immune system that sometimes prevent willing living kidney donors from being able to donate to their loved ones. It is estimated that one third of all willing kidney donors will have an incompatible blood type with their intended recipient. Now for the good news. There is a new way to overcome this problem: an arrangement called paired donation. Kidney paired donation matches one incompatible donor/recipient pair to another pair with a complementary incompatibility, so that the donor of the first pair gives to the recipient of the second, and vice versa. In other words, the two pairs swap kidneys.

Organ Donor Matching Services provided by Matching Donors, connects Organ Donors with Donor Matches worldwide

The National Kidney Foundation, Inc., a major voluntary health organization, seeks to prevent kidney and urinary tract diseases, improve the health and well-being of individuals and families affected by these diseases, and increase the availability of all organs for transplantation.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering work in finding cures and saving children with pediatric cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Founded by late entertainer Danny Thomas and located in Memphis, Tennessee, St. Jude is the premiere institution for treating such life-threatening illnesses as leukemia, brain tumors, solid tumors, sickle cell disease, osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), pediatric AIDS and other childhood infectious diseases. All St. Jude treatment programs use a unique multidisciplinary approach that ensures the best treatment possible for its patients. St. Jude has long been on the cutting edge of treatment, pioneering the use of bone marrow transplants for numerous childhood diseases, and freely shares its discoveries with scientific and medical communities around the world. ALSAC/St. Jude covers all costs not covered by insurance for medical treatment rendered at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Families without insurance are never asked to pay.

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