ORLANDO, Fla (Ivanhoe Newswire) — More than one hundred thousand people are currently waiting for life-saving organ transplants but 17 of them die each day due to lack of donors. Now one woman is working with lawmakers to change the system, allowing more people, even people who are HIV positive, to donate their organs.
Christine Durand, M.D. says, “It was a death sentence in the 1980s, if you got HIV aids you were going to die a horrible death.”
Now, forty years later …
“With one pill once a day, you will live to an old age and die of something else,” said Durand.
Now it’s even possible to donate and receive organs from people who are HIV positive. Johns’ Hopkins oncologist Christine Durand and HIV kidney donor Nina Martinez are working together to make it happen.
“We worked with congress to pass the hope act and started doing cadaveric kidneys and cadaveric livers,” said Durand
“And then, the first deceased donor HIV to HIV donor transplant happened in March of 2016 at Johns Hopkins,” adds Martinez.
And 150 transplants later …
“That’s when I donated in 2019, also at Johns Hopkins, as the first living kidney donor with HIV,” says Martinez.
Nina Martinez was born HIV negative, but a blood transfusion as a child rendered her HIV-positive.
Nina is one of the first and only HIV-positive kidney donors. She’s co-authored a paper with the next two living HIV donors to keep the push for more donor possibilities alive. Organs
“We know that people living with HIV are not getting referred to transplant evaluation, and even if they are getting referred to transplant evaluation, they’re not getting wait-listed,” said Martinez.
Martinez says, “It’s the fact that people living with HIV who need organ transplants can be twice as likely to die while on the transplant wait list with everybody else.”
Speaking of two women making an effort, these congresswomen, Nikema Williams and Katie Porter, led 23 colleagues in sending a letter to health and human services secretary—Xavier Becerra. Asking him to remove the barrier people with HIV face to receiving organ transplants.
Contributors to this news report include: Donna Parker, Producer; Bob Walko, Editor, Kirk Manson, Photographer
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