Canada has an organ donation rate of only 18 donors per million people, one of the world’s lowest. In a blog for the Ivey International Centre for Health Innovation, HBA student Zoha Khan offers ideas to improve the national rates – and to keep health care costs down.
Khan points out a lack of donors comes with a price tag. She gives an example: The cost for hemodialysis treatment is around $60,000 per patient, per year, while the one-time cost for a kidney transplant is just $23,000.
“While waiting on these lists for kidneys, lungs, livers, or other organs, individuals rely on various machines and medications to survive and keep their organs working,” she writes. “This not only adds to health care costs but can greatly deteriorate an individual’s quality of life.”
