All people, no matter where they live, have a right to health and access to quality health care. This includes access to care such as transplantation, a life-saving procedure that is critical for people living with serious conditions such as chronic kidney disease (CKD), a non-communicable disease (NCD) where the kidney loses its function over time. With proper treatment, such as organ transplantation, individuals living with an NCD like CKD can live long and healthy lives.
Through his year 2 project entitled ‘Organic Tales‘, NCD Child Young Leader Joab Wako, a young person with a lived experience of kidney transplantation, has made it his mission to raise awareness of the importance of altruistic organ donation from both living and deceased, in his home country of Kenya. Altruistic donation is a process where one person donates an organ or tissue to another person without an intended recipient.
Project goals and partner
In partnership with Transplant Education Kenya, Organic Tales is a project that uses storytelling to raise awareness of kidney donation and educate the public on altruistic organ donation so that they are empowered with the knowledge to increase organ donation and prevent organ trafficking, which happens more in low and middle-income countries.
Voices to create change
Storytelling can be a powerful tool. That is why Organic Tales was created to be a platform to shine a light on the many voices and stories of those with lived experiences of organ donations and transplants in Kenya.
The videos also gives space to debunking myths and misconceptions of organ donations, provides advice to those living with a chronic condition, and outlines some of the requirements of organ transplantation.
Organic Tales is also creating change through graphics inspired by donor-recipient stories. The graphics below, and others, will continue to be used to raise awareness of organ donation and transplant and have also been used to create T-shirts, as a way to raise funds that can help the project and advocacy work continue.
The designer of the graphics is Kenyan-based illustrator, Nikita Abuya.
Resources :
- https://www.organdonor.gov/learn
- https://unos.org/transplant/facts/
- https://www.life-source.org/latest/organ-donation-and-religion/
- https://www.kidneyeducation.com/English/kidney-transplantation/14#Paired-kidney-donation–Pre-emptive-kidney-transplant
Watch the ‘tales’ and stay tuned with the project and activities from Transplant Education Kenya.
