FACT BOX
• Donors can be living people or the dead.
• Currently, Kenya has no cadaver donor and people rely on relatives who are compatible.
• Doctors ensure the brain is dead but the blood is still pumping in cadaver donations before harvesting the kidney.
• A kidney from an older person cannot be given to a young person because the organ also ages.
• A man’s kidney is preferred to a woman’s for donation.
• One’s body could reject a kidney if they do not take medication.
• Those who have undergone transplant are on medication for life.