Disadvantaged by his skin color: He demands US$1 million for five years of waiting for a kidney

An African-American man who waited more than five years for a kidney transplant is seeking $1 million in damages in a lawsuit alleging that the patient-prioritization process was biased by race.

“He had this constant delay in the process of getting a kidney,” said the patient’s attorney, Matthew L. Venezia said. The Washington Post tuesday They could have fixed his timing. But they don’t… Many patients don’t have an 18-month timeframe.”

Last week, African-American Anthony Randall filed a lawsuit against Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where he has been listed for more than five years for a kidney, as well as the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), an American transplant organization.

The patient, who wants to represent more than 27,500 black patients, is seeking $1 million in financial compensation for delays caused by the algorithm used until last January.

“The adjustment for black-identified patients…resulted in a systematic underestimation of the severity of kidney disease in many black patients. Especially in organ transplants, this may have negatively affected the time on the list”, the Board of Directors of UNOS decided last June.

But US media pointed out that hospitals were ordered to stop using that part of the algorithm until January and announce that black patients were eligible to have their “time out” accumulated expectations adjusted. .

If these changes had been made sooner, Anthony Randall may have already received a kidney that would allow him to work, he lamented in the lawsuit as he was second on the waiting list in December.

Two similar cases were reported in New York and Washington in 2021 and 2022. Currently, there are believed to be about 104,000 patients on the waiting list for organ donation in the United States, most waiting for a kidney.

In 2022, a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reports that black patients will wait an average of 727 days on the list, while white patients will wait 374 days.