Demanding access to organ transplant procedures for undocumented immigrants, a group of hunger strikers set up camp outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Sunday.
They said they would stay until hopsital CEO Dean Harrison agreed to a meeting.
The group of about 40 picketers included 14 people who were in the sixth day of a hunger strike.
“We’re asking for help,” said Blanca Gomez, 23, who needs a kidney transplant. “I go to dialysis three times a week. I’m not going off the hunger strike until I get on the transplant list.”
Gomez said she had lost four pounds and was surviving on water and Gatorade.
The group said 14 undocumented Mexican immigrants who live in the Chicago area need either a liver or kidney transplant, but they can’t afford care because they are denied federal health care because they’re not citizens.
On Sunday afternoon, a spokesman for Northwestern Memorial Hospital was not able to provide answers about Northwestern’s transplant policies.
The situation boils down to a moral and ethical dilemma, said Dr. David Ansell, chief medical officer at Rush University Medical Center.
“One the one hand, the intent of the national transplant registry is to base transplants on who needs them most, but there are indeed a whole group of people who find themselves shut out,” he said. “And these are people who are uninsurable, and it creates an ethical dilemma of doing the right thing against the extreme cost of doing a transplant.”
An average kidney transplant can cost between $100,000 and $200,000, Ansell said. The care needed before and after surgery, in addition to medication, can cost tens of thousands more. http://www.suntimes.com/21729011-761/hunger-strikers-seek-transplants-for-undocumented-immigrants.html
First, these people are here illegally and they should not just jump to the top of the list and push back citizens of the U.S..
Second, if the person who is on a hunger strike and is need of a kidney transplant, they cannot be that sick for a transplant.
Third, if they want the transplants, raise the money- hold car washes, bake sales, sell more crack or whatever it takes to get the transplant. This is what many transplant recipients have done over the years to get their names on a transplant lists. While insurance can cover a major portion of a transplant, you still need to money to pay all the co-pays, medications and other medical costs and this where your friends and neighbors help you out.
Finally, I have always said that people who need on going treatment for a disease or condition, the doctors need to stabilize them and them send home to their home country and let their country of origin take care of them. Taxpayers should not be paying for illegal immigrants medical care. Stabilize them and then send them home via a medical transport airplane, like the military uses to transport injured sick and injured service people.
And if you don't like this, hunger strikers, then just starve yourself to death. That'll show us.
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