Usman Khalid

Brief Outline:

Usman is a transplant and organ retrieval surgeon.

Usman Khalid talks about the organ donor shortage from BAME backgrounds.

Hello everyone. My name’s Usman Khalid. I’m a transplant and organ retrieval surgeon working in Cardville University Health Board. I’m a Muslim and I’m of Pakistani heritage.

Organ donation and transplantation is a very dear topic to me. There’s over 6,000 patients on the transplant waiting list, and approximately one third of those are from what can be described as black and minority ethnic background. And a significant proportion of those are Muslims.

Unfortunately only 8% of the deceased donors are from the same background, and therefore there’s a major gap, if you like, of organ donor shortage within our community, being a Muslim and a transplant and organ retrieval surgeon.

This is, this is an issue that is very dear to me personally and I’ve had multiple discussions with many people and I think the main issues within our community is that there is a general lack of knowledge about permissibility of organ donation and transplantation. And also a degree of mistrust with the healthcare authorities.

I think the only way to overcome that really is to kind of do our own research look into the topic ourselves, um, openly have that discussion with our imams and with the OMA and the Sheikhs.

There’s lots of forums out there. So the information is available for all of us to do our research and have that discussion then with our family and make a decision and communicate that decision with our family so that
when the time comes and if the opportunity arises for organisation to happen, then at least our families are best equipped to help the healthcare authorities in that situation.