Original article by Gus Alexiou for Forbes
The U.S. city currently hosting this year’s edition of the Transplant Games of America couldn’t be more apposite.
Birmingham, Alabama is known to many as the “magic city” and when it comes to giving people a second shot at life and encapsulating humankind’s capacity for generosity and altruism – you can’t get much more magical than the practice of organ donation.
The Transplant Games of America is a biannual sporting extravaganza organized by the Transplant Life Foundation. Commencing in 1990, the Games feature both living donors and organ recipients competing in 21 different sports ranging from track and field, swimming and cycling to tennis, golf and basketball.
The underlying ethos and mission have inspirational, practical and commemorative components. The Games represent a showcase for the kind of physical prowess and sporting successes both living donors and recipients can still go on to experience. Meanwhile, there are multiple opportunities for networking with others who may be facing similar challenges be that with diet, medication and also medical insurance. Families of deceased donors get to share their personal stories with people who have found themselves in that same uniquely heartbreaking position whilst also being given the most vibrant and life-affirming reminder that the ultimate sacrifices of their loved ones were not in vain.
“The Games are really a message delivery mechanism about organ transplantation and a great way to educate host cities and their population about the transplant world,” says DJ Mackovets, CEO of the Local Organizing Committee for the 2024 Transplant Games which conclude tomorrow.
Yvonne Stucke from West Bend Wisconsin has been attending the Games since 2006 with her husband Dennis who has had two kidney transplants over the past three decades. “Hearing the stories, knowing what they (the participants) have been through” is what Yvonne finds most impactful about the Transplant Games.
She adds, “Sometimes the person who does the worst gets the most cheering because of what they’ve been through.”
Darin Schumacher, from Team Wisconsin a kidney recipient of 24 years who has competed in Tennis Singles and Golf Doubles has also been attending the Games since 2006.
“To me, it’s really like a family reunion, because even if you don’t really know them, you have something in common. Everyone is very friendly, appreciative, and welcoming,” explains Darin.
Shifting priorities
Of course, behind all the fun and fanfare of the Games lie incredibly high-stakes matters of life and death.
Though the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act gained significant traction in the U.S. in the mid-eighties by providing a regulatory framework for organ donation and harvesting, now, almost four decades on, there remains plenty of work to do according to Bill Ryan, President and CEO of the Transplant Life Foundation who are also the main organizer of the Transplant Games.
“Right now, in the United States, there are roughly 110,000 people on the transplant register and 15 to 17 of them will die every day waiting for an organ that’s not available,” says Ryan.
He pinpoints part of the problem as having a system that has failed to adapt to the growing trend towards so-called living donation whereby volunteers altruistically donate organs, rather than what used to be a sole focus on recovering organs from the deceased.
“Perhaps 20% of the living donations today are coming from altruistic donors and not family members,” Ryan explains.
“We’ve evolved from an industry where organs were primarily recovered from deceased donors. That’s obviously still happening the majority of the time but there’s also this burgeoning industry of living donation and we need to catch up to the challenges that brings.
“This organ procurement organization across the nation that started back in the 1980s for organ recovery and donor families is not particularly well suited for living donation,” Ryan says.
He continues, “There’s currently no systematic way to track people interested in becoming a living donor. For a start, there’s no national database. Instead, each local Transplant Centre maintains its own. So, unless we get a federal program that can assist in the development costs of a larger database, the Transplant Centers are only going to be able to maintain a very small number of people on their lists which then restricts access.”
There are myriad other challenges at play too in the organ transplant world from a lack of more wide-ranging advocacy and support services for recipients and donors as well as a need for more research into the long-term health risks of high doses of anti-organ rejection meds.
Ryan is keen to highlight the racial disparities that prevail too:
“People of color are not served to the same degree as the rest of the community in terms of being able to donate and receive organs,” says Ryan.
“There are social and economic factors at play including a fear of government and Big Brother. The multicultural community remains underserved. One of the subsets of our mission is to try and help educate the multicultural community and get them more comfortable with the thought of donating and receiving organs.”
It would appear that, though the science of human organ donation will inevitably march on, much of the miraculous medicinal magic was reconciled during the previous century. The challenges right now may be more around modernizing systems and attitudes to live up to the promise of being able to donate the gift of life. Sport remains one of the most powerful and culturally compelling recruitment tools around and it would appear the organizers, athletes and families supporting the Transplant Games appreciate this more than most.