People from South Asian and black communities in Scotland are being encouraged to join the NHS Organ Donor Register

Currently, patients from black and minority ethnic backgrounds wait, on average, twice as long for kidney transplants, compared with patients from the white population because of the shortage of suitable organs. It's a stark reality that more than a quarter of the people waiting for a transplant are from black and minority ethnic communities. A transplant is much more likely to be successful if the donor and recipient have the same ethnic origin, but less than 5% of organ donors are from these communities. The shortage of suitable organs means that waiting times for black, South Asian, Chinese and other groups are much longer than those for the general population. Asians wait three times as long for a transplant due to shortages and are also more likely to need an organ transplant. There are 2,726 black and minority ethnic (BME) people waiting for a transplant in Britain. BME people are three times more likely to need a transplant than the rest of the population because of the higher incidence of diabetes and high blood pressure, which can lead to kidney failure, and heart disease.