TELL - Transplant Access in South Africa with Stella de Kock
🎙️At 35, Stell de Kock was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease. Her only symptom at the time was a sore foot.
She has now been on dialysis three times a week for 14 years and has spent 13 years on the transplant waitlist.
Stell is the Managing Director of Transplant Education for Living Legacies (TELL) in South Africa. In this conversation, she shares what it’s like to live long-term on dialysis while leading national advocacy efforts to improve access to transplantation.
We discuss how organ donation works in South Africa, where deceased donation is opt-in and still requires family consent, regardless of the potential donor’s documented wishes. Living donation is significantly underutilized, and only one potential living donor is evaluated and worked up per year. Stell has had four people come forward to donate to her; none were ultimately suitable candidates.
We also talk about how South Africa approaches altruistic living donation differently from the United States, introducing donors and recipients prior to surgery. Living liver donation became available about 15 years ago, but only two hospitals in the country perform the surgery, and only one offers it for pediatric recipients.
Stell shares TELL’s advocacy work, including the “Make It Known” tattoo campaign, Zane the Zunicorn, the Ride Joburg cycling team, and Orgamites — creative efforts aimed at normalizing conversations about organ donation and making people’s wishes clear.
This episode explores the realities of transplant access in South Africa and the work being done to change it. đź’š