Man receives kidney from donor met online

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Man receives kidney from donor met online

Special to the Ledger 
Enterprise Ledger
October 17, 2007

PHOENIX, Ariz. - Steve Duemler needed a kidney soon or he would die. On Monday, Oct. 15, he received a kidney transplant from an altruistic stranger, Anita Cheryl Scarborough - a UPS worker from Houston, Texas.

They found each other on MatchingDonors.com. The transplant took place at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

Steve’s wife put his profile on MatchingDonors.com telling his need for a kidney.

She wrote: “My husband Steve, age 37 years old, father of a 3 year old and 8 month old, needs your help. Steve and I met 16 years ago, while studying together at Indiana University, Bloomington. Steve graduated 14 years ago and sold his car in order to visit me, while I did an overseas study assignment in France…it was at that moment that I knew that we were meant to be. We were married 13 years ago, and spent several years working and living in six different cities around the world.

A few days later she was contacted on MatchingDonors.com by Anita Cheryl Scarborough from Houston.

Scarborough wrote: “I am a 46 yr old female. I have two sons, and 2 grandsons. I am in Texas, but have family in Englewood, Co. Traveling out of my area is not a problem. I have worked in the legal field for over 20 years. I was an EMT for four years. I currently work for the great company of UPS as a Safety Co-Chair. God gave me two kidneys. One to keep and one to share. I just ran across a June 2006, issue of Texas Monthly Magazine and was touched by a story I read regarding the enormous need for Kidney Transplates. Never knew. I have been on the Bone Marrow Registry for years. I am a Commit For Life Blood Donor (just means I donate at least once a quarter).”

This is the 58th transplant surgery in little over two years from a patient and altruistic donor that found each other on MatchingDonors.com.

MatchingDonors.com was launched in January 2004 as an Internet service based in Massachusetts. Patients on transplant lists put their profiles on the Web site, and potential donors browse the site for a life they want to help save.

Donors are not compensated, since it is against the law to have any financial benefit from organ donation.

Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, one of the Web site founders, said “Patients are asked to pay a membership fee, but there is a sliding scale if they can’t afford it.”

Many praise MatchingDonors.com as a creative, entrepreneurial response to this deadly disparity, and 100 percent of the money paid for patient memberships is applied to running the site.

Since the inception of MatchingDonors.com, directed living organ donations have increased to historic numbers. According to UNOS.org, in 2005 there were 6,898 live donors recovered for transplantation and 7,593 were from deceased donors.

“We believe that if more people were better educated on the ability to be a live organ donor, and we add in the personal communication between potential organ donors and patients needing an organ, the number of donors will increase and so will the probability of a patient receiving their much needed organ. We already have over 4,170 potential donors on our site waiting to find patients needing organs”, said Lowney, MatchingDonors.com Medical Director. “MatchingDonors.com is the most comprehensive searching system available. Other organizations concentrate mainly on the passive anonymous portion of finding organ donors - leaving little or no communication between patients and potential donors”

MatchingDonors.com has an extremely high success rate - most patient members that have been on the site for at least 30 days have been offered an organ by a potential donor.

At least 40 patient members have upcoming surgery dates with their donors found on MatchingDonors.com.

MatchingDonors.com now has over 252 patients with active profiles and over 4,300 potential donors on the site. New patients and potential donors sign up almost daily.

As of Oct. 15, 2007, there are 97,629 patients waiting for an organ transplant in the United States. Yet, in 2005, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, www.UNOS.org a non-profit organization contracted with the US Department of Health, there were only 28,112 organ transplants performed in the United States. Every day, 17 people die while waiting for a transplant of a vital organ, such as a heart, liver, kidney, pancreas, or lung.

This creates a national crisis that has led even President Bush to publicly encourage private organizations to raise awareness of the important need for organ and tissue donors.

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