Donating a kidney to a child

Donating a kidney to a child

If you’re an adult, you can donate a kidney to your child, even if he or she is very young. This donation will give your child the best odds of living a normal life for years to come.

Most of the time, the donor is one of the parents, but aunts, uncles and other family members can also donate one of their kidneys, and the patient’s brothers and sisters can donate as long as they’re adults. A child can also receive a kidney from a family friend or through a donation chain. In the latter case, the person who donates a kidney to the child has to be in the same age range as the child’s parents.

If the young patient suffers from a genetic disease, the donor must not have the same disease, a possibility that needs to be ruled out by a number of tests.

Before the transplant takes place, the child needs to have reached a certain height and weight, typically 10–11 kg, as the child’s abdomen needs to be large enough to accommodate an adult kidney. This assessment will be made by the young patient’s medical team. Using intensive nutritional therapies and growth hormone, the target weight can be reached quickly. In the meantime, the pre-transplant medical assessment can be carried out before the patient reaches the target weight.

The assessment that the donor undergoes is similar to the one described in the section entitled “The Examinations” and is carried out in a centre authorized to conduct assessments of adults. The donor will also be entitled to the same financial compensation as that described in the section entitled “Reimbursement of Expenses.”