In France, the time to obtain a kidney transplant varies from 13 to 66 months depending on the region. Magali Leo, spokesperson for the Renaloo association, has just approached the Defender of Rights, the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) and the Ministry of Health to question this mode of attribution.
In Caen, Rennes, Marseille, Poitiers and Brest, the waiting times for kidney transplants are less than 1.5 years, while they are more than 4 years in Créteil, Saint Louis, Foch or even Tenon (for Foch and Tenon, waiting times even exceed 5 years). The national median wait (length of time after which half of the patients registered between 2011 and 2016 are transplanted) is also increasing steadily. She was 31.3 months in 2016, just over two and a half years.
66 months of waiting
In France, a health structure that takes a sample of both kidneys from a deceased donor has the option of keeping one in order to allocate it to a patient registered locally on the waiting lists. Result: the times to obtain a kidney transplant vary from 13 to 66 months depending on the region.
“Depending on the population pool, this gives disparities in the median waiting period of 1 to 5 years, says the nephrologist Lionel Rostaing in the Parisian. The criteria are more geographic than medical. For some patients, this has a negative impact on their chance of survival, others receive inferior grafts “.
Defender of rights
Changing your geographic location is not the solution. Hursine Ozkul, who has to wait at least five years for a kidney transplant, testifies in everyday life: “not everyone accepts patients elsewhere! And that means abandoning the medical team to which you are accustomed”.
Magali Leo, spokesperson for the Renaloo association, has just contacted the Defender of Rights, the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) and the Ministry of Health. She asks the Biomedicine Agency, the body in charge of transplants, to “put an end to the practice” of local kidney transplants.
15,470 patients awaiting a kidney transplant
Kidney transplantation is used as a treatment for end stage chronic kidney disease, which occurs when 80% of the functional units in both kidneys are destroyed. The main causes of this pathology are diabetes and long-term high blood pressure.
According to the Biomedicine Agency, more than 76,500 people suffer from end-stage renal disease in France. Of the 15,470 patients awaiting a kidney transplant in 2015, only 3,486 (an increase of 7.9% compared to 2014) were able to benefit from it, including 547 from living donors, or 15.7% kidney transplants.
Since 2011, the bioethics law has widened the circle of potential donors; it is now possible to donate a living kidney to a family member but also to a close friend, which has in part allowed living donor kidney transplants to increase by 177% in 10 years.
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