Blacks must wait longer to get organ transplants

By Lucas Sullivan, Staff Writer for Dayton Daily News
Updated 10:44 AM Monday, May 3, 2010

KETTERING — Ty Stone wipes her tears while speaking to a room full of people about her son’s death.


Steven Smith, 19, died in September 2007, six weeks after he was hit by an out-of-control motorist while walking on Philadelphia Drive.

Somewhere out there, Stone tells a crowd gathered Thursday, April 29, at NCR Country Club, someone is walking and seeing again because of Steven’s selfless donations. Stone sees a few black faces in the mostly white crowd. She hopes her message resonates most with them.

Not enough blacks are donating organs, especially kidneys, to meet the growing need in the area, doctors and advocates say. Locally and nationally, blacks in need of organs are waiting two to three times longer than whites, according to Life Connection of Ohio.

Nationally 107,000 — about 3,100 in Ohio — are awaiting organ transplants and 31 percent of those are black, according to data provided by Life Connection, a local nonprofit that promotes organ donation.

But in this area, blacks make up nearly half of 86 people on a waiting list at Miami Valley Hospital. All are in need of kidneys, said Dr. Thav Thambi-Pillai, a transplant surgeon at Miami Valley. “Diabetes and high blood pressure are much more common in the black community and both lead to kidney failure,” Thambi-Pillai said.

Organ donation requires recipients and donors to have as many physical and biological matches as possible, Thambi-Pillai said, though advances in medicine have allowed for transplants to cross ethnicities.

Since her son’s death, Stone, 45, has joined with Life Connection, the donor advocacy group, to honor Steven’s legacy. Stone said she hopes Steven’s selfless story helps increase organ donation in the black community.

Bilal Momin, 55, who received a kidney transplant in 2006, heard Stone’s message Thursday. “(Blacks) have the greatest need, but we give the least,” Momin, an associate minister at Freedom-Hill Baptist Church in Dayton, said. “There’s no greater legacy than saving someone’s life.”


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