Key Highlights
- The charity Kidney Research UK states that “just 32% of patients receive a transplant within a year of joining the waiting list and six people die every week while waiting.”People who experience kidney failure need either lifelong dialysis or a transplant to survive.
- Yet even for those lucky enough to get a transplant, that is by no means the end of the story.
- Kidneys from deceased donors last an average of 10 to 15 years, those from a living person 20 to 25.
- If (or rather, when) a transplant fails, the affected patient once again needs dialysis or a donated organ. The UK is not unusual in having far more people who need kidneys than there are kidneys available.
- Every country in the world has this problem.
