Hispanics Lag U.S. Average on Willingness to Donate Organs
"Thirty-one percent of organ donors across Texas in 2010 were Hispanic, while new census figures show that 42 percent of the state’s population is Latino."
In South Texas along the Rio Grande from Brownsville to Laredo, where Latinos make up the vast majority of 1.4 million residents — many of them first-generation Mexican-Americans — organs from just 19 individuals were donated in 2010, according to the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance. The overall U.S. average is about 26 organ donors per million,
Reuters writes about the reluctance of Hispanics to become organ donors by telling the story of Norma García and the difficulties she encountered within her own family when her 13-year old daughter was killed in a car wreck. The decision on whether to donate her organs or not ripped the family apart and even tested her cultural identity and her Christian faith.
The story begin in 2001 after Jasmine García was declared brain dead at San Antonio’s University Hospital in 2001. Doctors asked her mother, Norma, if she would be willing to donate her daughter’s organs.
According to Reuters, that was the start of a deep and difficult family strife.
“The majority of my family had a belief that, ‘How could you do that? How could you allow her to be mutilated? How could you let them take her heart out?’” García, a San Antonio real estate agent, told Reuters. “My parents are from Mexico, and they had the feeling that, ‘She is your daughter. Why would you allow them to do this to her?”
Reuters said that García ultimately made an organ donation of Jasmine’s heart and liver. The decision left her estranged from several relatives for some time.
Yet García’s is not unique. It highlights a cultural divide that organ donation advocates say is threatening the ability of surgeons to save lives through organ transplants, especially as new census figures show the nation’s Hispanic population surging.
Reuters said that Hispanics — especially first- and second-generation Mexican-Americans — are less likely to donate organs than Americans as a whole, according to organ donation experts.
“We find that the Hispanic community tells us, ‘My religion says not to donate,’ and ‘I can’t have an open casket because the body will be damaged,’” Esmeralda Perez of the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance told Reuters. “They feel that their loved one will be disfigured, or the person will not be able to get into heaven because their body will not be whole.”
Thirty-one percent of organ donors across Texas in 2010 were Hispanic, while new census figures show that 42 percent of the state’s population is Latino.
The same thing happens in other states with large Hispanic populations.
Latinos’ reticence about organ donation centers on religion, Nuvia Enriquez, Hispanic outreach coordinator for the Donor Network of Arizona, explained to Reuters.
“A lot of work that we do is to go out and try to dissolve some of these myths,” she said. “We talk to them about the Catholic Church’s position on donation, which is very positive. Pope John Paul II was actually the first pope to declare donation to be an act of love, and Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal, was a card-carrying organ donor.”
Still the church must do more to educate the faithful. Forty five percent of the patients on the national waiting list to receive organs are Hispanic. And many Latinos are still reticent about donating their organs.
The Rev. John Leies, a prominent Catholic theologian and former president of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, said the church is working to convince the faithful that organ donation does not render the body unfit for the afterlife.
“The church is well aware that there are so many people waiting for organs, and there are not enough to be supplied and people die without receiving their organs,” he said. “It is difficult to fight against these cultural ideas, and maybe the church hasn’t made a good enough effort.”
According to Reuters, García said her relatives, who once so strongly criticized her decision to donate Jasmine’s organs, have since become big supporters of organ donation.
“After we all got more educated, and the family started attending these events where donors’ families meet organ recipients, and seeing how much of a difference this has made in the lives of others and the good they could do for all these people, and how this was keeping Jasmine’s memory alive, I think they realized it was the right decision,” she said.
Source: The Americano.com
