Emergence of an Israel faith-based community organization facilitating live donor kidney transplantation

Abstract

Background: The 2014 Consensus Conference on Best Practices in Living Kidney Donations recognized live donor kidney transplantation as the best treatment for late-stage kidney disease, yielding superior graft and patient survival, improved quality of life, fewer requirements for dialysis and increased cost-effectiveness compared to deceased donor kidney transplantation. Yet in spite of the excellent results of living kidney donation, the annual number of living kidney donors is declining in many countries, including the United States. In Israel, a non-profit organization, Matnat Chaim ("Gift of Life" in Hebrew), a faith-based initiative, has emerged as a major force for arranging living donor kidney transplantation mainly by facilitating altruistic living unrelated donor transplantation.

Methods: A retrospective review of the records of live kidney donations facilitated by the Matnat Chaim organization and referred to Israel transplant centers, since the organization's inception in 2009, was performed and compared to published data from the Israel Ministry of Health.

Results: Matnat Chaim has facilitated 494 live kidney donations since its founding in February 2009 until the end of 2017. Of the 124 live kidney transplants performed in 2016, 111 (90%) were shown to be altruistic and unrelated. This large number of donations was associated with a doubling of the total number of kidney transplantations, performed in Israel (data published by the Israel Ministry of Health).

Conclusions: The success of an Israel community organization in the promotion of kidney transplantation may serve as a model for other religious and non-religious communities worldwide.

Keywords: Altruism; Community organization; Kidney transplant.

Fig. 1

Kidney transplants in Israel, 2004–2016. This figure demonstrates the total number of kidney transplantations (blue), comparing the living donor transplants (red) deceased donor kidney transplants (green) to those facilitated by Matnat Chaim (purple). Starting in 2009, there has been a sharp increase in the total number of transplants, and this is mainly due to the increase in the number of live donor transplants, largely facilitated by Matnat Chaim. The number of transplants was obtained from the Israel Ministry of Health (http://www.health.gov.il/Subjects/Organ_transplant/transplant/Pages/default.aspx)

Fig. 2

Kidney transplants in Israel by donor source from 2007 to 2016 (number of transplants per million population). The number of deceased donor transplants (blue) has increased by 64%, whereas the number of living donor transplants (red) has increased by 174%. The number of transplants was obtained from the Ministry of Health and the population figures from the National Bureau of Statistics

Fig. 3

Total number of live donor transplants in Israel from 2010 to 2016 (number of transplants per million population). The number of live donor transplants in Israel is composed of those transplants facilitated by Matnat Chaim and other donors (i.e., those that were not facilitated by Matnat Chaim). This figure shows that the number of other live donor kidney transplants has remained stable at around 10 per million inhabitants over the past few years. The increase in total number of living donors per million inhabitants since 2013 appears due to the increase in donors facilitated by the Matnat Chaim organization. The “other donors” represents family members who donated not using Matnat Chaim as well as a small number of altruistic donors who went directly to a hospital or to the Israel Ministry of Health