Scott Dudley and Phil Rozario were complete strangers until last week.
Dudley is the mayor of Oak Harbour in Washington State. He decided to donate a kidney to Rozario after hearing his story at a B.C. Rotary Club meeting.
On Monday the transplant was performed.
Two days after the surgery, both donor and recipient are doing well.
“Our wait lists are one of the longest in the country,” said Dr. Christopher Nguan, renal transplant specialist. “In some blood groups, our wait list is more than 10 years long.”
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Dudley is a live donor as he will be living with just one kidney for the rest of his life. Rozario was scheduled to start dialysis this week, and with his blood type, could have waited a decade for a kidney if it wasn’t for the generosity of Dudley.
“It’s a really great story for the rotary club in general,” said Nguan. Rotarians believe in service above self, making new connections, ethics, and international collaboration.
There are 450 people waiting for transplants in B.C. and kidneys account for 80 per cent of the waits.
To attract more donors B.C. Transplant has recently adopted a program yielding great success in Ontario and Quebec. It involves intervention when a patient is near death. An independent team of professionals approaches family members to persuade them to let their loved one become a deceased donor.
“We’ve started to do that in B.C. now in the past couple of years,” said Dr. Jean Shapiro, B.C. solid organ transplant medical manager. “It is a growth segment in our deceased donor population as well, so I think that’s in part allowed the deceased donor numbers to go up in B.C. and that’s a good thing.”
These two men will no doubt have a friendship that will last forever.
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